
Book > ri ^ "^O 
Gopght]^? 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 

By GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 



Divine Inspiration 



BY 

GEORGE PRESTON MAINS 

AUTHOK OF "CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW AGE," "MODERN 
THOUGHT AND TRADITIONAL FAITH," ETC. 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1915, by 
George H. Doran Company 



SEP 25 1915 

©CI,A410650 



TO MY TWO DAUGHTERS 
JESSIE MAINS STRONG AND 
MARY PEARL ROWLAND 
THIS VOLUME IS MOST 
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED 



FOREWORD 

The mental and moral kinship between God 
and Man is a fact of immeasurable signifi- 
cance. To God Himself this fact must be 
one of supreme purport. Indeed, so far as 
we have experimental knowledge of the 
imiverse, the human soul is the one intel- 
ligence to whom God can communicate His 
own thoughts, hence the only being with 
whom He can enter into social relations. It 
seems reasonable to assume that in all his 
eternity God has never been more interested 
in any one object than in the creation of 
man, than in the begetting of human chil- 
dren endowed with mental, moral and affec- 
tional aptitudes, responsive to His own 
infinite mind and heart. 

It is quite conceivable, though not within 
the sphere of our present knowledge, that 
there may be other worlds peopled with 
moral intelligences of either a higher or 
lower development than man. But, if so, 

[vii] 



FOREWORD 



this fact could only magnify the thought 
that in the Divine Nature there is a yearn- 
ing which only satisfies itself as the universe 
which God has made is citizened with His 
own moral offspring. If in other worlds 
than our own there are spiritual and moral 
beings, these also are a part of God's larger 
family, a family with which the human 
brotherhood is linked in indissoluble kinship. 

There could, however, seem no higher 
purpose of the creative act than when God, 
for a supreme end, and in gratification of 
the deepest passion of His eternal nature, 
begat man in His own likeness. 

So far as man is concerned, his kinship 
with God is the one fact which stamps him 
as a being of infinite values. Rob him of 
this kinship, and his very existence is a mock- 
ing enigma. It matters not to what heights 
of attainment the individual may ascend — 
the man most saintly, the genius most tran- 
scendent, the philanthropist of highest serv- 
ice, the most inspiring singer, the creator 
of superlative art, the patriot who sacrifices 
his life for country, the inspirer of loftiest 

[ viii ] 



FOREWORD 



ideals, the man whose enthusiasm for hmnan- 
ity has prompted him to the most self- 
sacrificing service, a service which has given 
him largest place in the grateful love of his 
fellows — each and all, if they have no real 
kinship with God, are, so far as we have 
means of knowing, doomed to an end no 
better than that of the beast which perisheth. 
The mental, moral and spiritual kinship of 
man with God is either a huge fake of the 
human imagination, or it is for both God and 
man the sublimest fact of our human world. 

Underneath this writing is the clear and 
positive conviction that God has made man 
an immortal being, and that around the en- 
tire circle of his nature he is endowed with 
aptitudes, mental, moral, spiritual, for po- 
tential growth evermore and increasingly 
Godward. All this is, and must be, posited 
in any worthy conception of Divine Inspira- 
tion. To lend confirmation to this view, this 
little book, briefly, and of course very in- 
completely, treating its great theme, is 
reverently dedicated. 

If any conservative reader should charge 
[ix] 



rOEEWOED 



me with assigning too broad and various a 
field, of accrediting too many and too con- 
tinuous functions to the Spirit of Inspira- 
tion, my confident reply would be that any 
view which assigns to the Holy Spirit a 
sphere less large, or an activity among men 
less pervasive or less continuous than I have 
herein indicated, would be a minifying and 
essentially unworthy view of its great Sub- 
ject. It is a superlative orthodoxy for the 
devout soul setting itself to any worthy task 
to follow Milton's example when the theme 
of his immortal epic was filling both his 
brain and heart: 

"And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; . . . 

. . . what in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support/' 

The convictions embodied in this discus- 
sion are not of sudden growth. They have 
come to me from many sources, and along 
the pathway of thoughtful years. While 
I have not undertaken to accredit specific 
sources from which I have borrowed, I think 

[X] 



FOREWORD 



I may justly say that I have made myself 
intelligently familiar with works of chief 
celebrity, especially in English, which have 
given distinctive treatment to the subject 
herein considered. In the consciousness of 
having faithfully sought to serve the sacred 
interests of Truth, I commit this volume, for 
such fate as may await it, to the uncertain 
seas of literary adventure. 

G. P. M. 
New York, 

September 1, 1915. 



[xi] 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

PAGE 

Inspiration Probable 21 

The assumption of Christian Theism funda- 
mental — Mental and moral correspondences 
between God and man the greatest fact in 
human knowledge — Belief in a supernatural 
Being or beings common to all races — Some 
forms in which this behef has manifested 
itself — Inspiration a sane philosophy. 

CHAPTER II 

Inspiration Universal 31 

The importance of the doctrine of Divine In- 
spiration — Revelation and Inspiration cor- 
relative terms — Revelation not restricted to 
any one race or age — Manifestations given 
to a particular people are for the benefit of 
a world-humanity — God's Spirit has at all 
times been present in the world — ^The ex- 
panding view of the historical development 
of God's world-plans — Inspiration imparted 
by the Spirit of God in diversified ways. 

CHAPTER III 

Hebrew Inspiration 47 

The mission of the Spirit of Divine Inspira- 
tion — ^The Hebrew people chosen as the 

[xiii] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
channel of revelation for historic prepara- 
tion — A supreme need met by the revelation 
recorded in the Bible — The subordinate 
relation of historic movements to God's 
spiritual purposes — A significant illustra- 
tion — ^The period surrounding the Advent. 

CHAPTER IV 

The Bible 57 

St. Matthew's historic conception of the Old 
Testament — ^The Bible a distinct record of 
God's revelation of Himself to men — Some 
impressive testimonials as to the power of 
the Bible. 

CHAPTER V 

Some Interesting Views 71 

The varying early ideas of inspiration — The 
Septuagint a faulty basis — "New Testa- 
ment Greek" in the light of modern re- 
search — ^The Council of Trent and the 
"Old Vulgate Latin edition"— The belief 
of the Reformers in an infallible book. 

CHAPTER VI 

The Bible and Science 85 

Methods of modern thinking controlled by 
scientific spirit — Science satisfied only with 
demonstrated truth — The Bible more and 
more receiving an interpretation not in 
conflict with scientific truth — The scientific 



[xiv] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 
spirit as applied to the Bible yielding most 
rich and wonderful results. 

CHAPTER VII 

The Bible a Human Book 93 

A book at best can be no more than a record — 
God's revelations of Himself made to the 
responsive human spirit — The Bible a lit- 
erary record of supreme experiences — Reve- 
lation eflFective only through inspiration. 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Bible Not Inerrant 103 

Critical scientific study demonstrates that in 
its literary, historic, and scientific features 
the Bible is neither inerrant nor infallible — 
The production of an infallible book an 
impossibility — The theory of an infallible 
book makes no adequate provision for in- 
tellectual and moral growth of race — Some 
of the exceeding difficulties which con- 
fronted the early translators — The Bible of 
to-day the most trustworthy rendering at 
present attainable of the original records of 
Divine Inspiration. 

CHAPTER IX 

Revelation Progressive 113 

God's revelation of Himself gradual — Such 
revelation limited by the moral ignorance 
and undeveloped spiritual faculties of man- 



[XV] 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

kind — The slow process of spiritual de- 
velopment in Israel — ^The mission of Christ 
to give a supreme revelation of God to the 
world — The spirit of inspiration as record- 
ing itself in Biblical narratives. 

CHAPTER X 

Inspiration Continuous 123 

The Spirit of Inspiration still a living and 
operative presence in the world — ^The work 
of the Holy Spirit of supreme importance — 
The inadequate interpretation of Christ's 
mission as given by the first gospel writers 
— St. Paul the first great world-interpreter 
of Christ's incarnate mission — The best ex- 
isting civilizations those which most fully 
embody the principles which Christ taught 
— The Holy Spirit ever in enlarging measure 
taking of the things of Christ and showing 
them unto men — No one age can fully 
comprehend or exhaust the potentialities of 
Christ — Prophet and apostle each fitted for 
his specific work — Their place in the his- 
toric structure of Divine Revelation — 
Divers gifts for various purposes — ^A 
present-day task to coordinate all truth 
into vital relations to Christian thought. 

CHAPTER XI 

The Spiritual Mind 145 

^ The faculty of the spiritual sense for appre- 
hending and appropriating spiritual truth — 



[xvi] 



CONTEXTS 



PAGE 

Spiritual certitude not conditioned upon 
mere intellectual processes — The divine 
standard of measurement — God has made 
spiritual possessions attainable to all His 
children — Some conspicuous examples of 
power-endued lives. 

CHAPTER XII 

Inspiration anb Immortality 159 

The deep need met by the doctrine of Im- 
mortality — The instinct of immortality di- 
vinely implanted — The ultimate inade- 
quacy of positivistic philosophy — No phi- 
losophy short of immortality can furnish 
life with highest motives of thought and 
conduct — The doctrine of Divine Inspira- 
tion receives its deepest significance in the! 
light of Immortality. 



[ xvii ] 



CHAPTER ONE 
INSPIRATION PROBABLE 



"Believing that there is a God, a Supreme Mind, a Per- 
sonal Being, endowed in the highest perfection with 
attributes which we are compelled to conceive of as like 
our own, we find no difficulty in believing that this great 
all-ruling central Personality seeks to draw to Itself the 
multitude of puny personalities which Its Will has called 
into existence — personalities as it might seem of infinitesimal 
moment when judged by their place in the material uni- 
verse, but every one of which acquires a far higher value 
when we remember that it is made in the image of its Creator, 
that it is spirit face to face with Spirit, conscious of its affinity 
and earnestly desiring to realize that affinity so far as it 
may. There* is an upward movement in the mind of man 
which takes away any surprise that we might feel at an 
answering condescension on the part of God." 

— Professor William Sanday, LL.D. 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 

CHAPTER I 

INSPIRATION PROBABLE 

Fundamental to the discussion here 
undertaken is the assumption of Christian 
Theism — the fact of a personal God, ''high- 
est of all, on whom we depend, to whom 
moral obligation is due, and who forms at 
the same time the source, the sustainer, and 
the goal of all existence." God as Infinite 
Personality is Sovereignty, Will, Intelli- 
gence, Holiness, Love, Fatherhood — and all 
in such perfection as immeasurably to tran- 
scend our human thought. 

To one intensely believing that the possi- 
bilities of Christian Theism furnish a most 
rational explanation of nature itself, that in 
these, as not from all other sources, is re- 
vealed for human life its largest meaning, its 
sublimest obligations and possibilities, there 
[21] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



can be no doubt that, as compared with this 
view, there can arise no rival theories merit- 
ing consideration. In any event, the Mmits 
set for this discussion preclude the fitness of 
attempting here to deal with philosophies of 
negation, of materialism or of agnosticism. 

If in the universe there be such a God as 
Christian Theism demands, then one does 
not have to travel far to reach a rational 
doctrine of Divine Inspiration. It is a vital 
claim of the Christian system that God and 
man are linked together in an indissoluble 
partnership of a common nature. Man's 
chief distinction is, that he is an intellectual, 
moral and spiritual being, and that as such 
he holds the closest kinship with God him- 
self. God is the Infinite. Man is the child, 
but a child with limitless possibilities of de- 
velopment, a child with an infinite outlook. 

That which we familiarly know as "revela- 
tion" is at bottom an appropriation, an ever- 
growing appropriation, by the human mind 
and spirit from treasures of philosophical 
and moral truth which with God are an in- 
finite possession. The greatest fact in hmnan 

[22] 



INSPIRATION PROBABLE 



knowledge is that of the mental and moral 
correspondences between God and man. 
Professor John Caird has given statement 
to this vital fact as follows: "Reason, fol- 
lowing in the wake of faith, grasps the great 
conception that the religious life is at once 
human and divine — the conception that God 
is a self -revealing God, that the Infinite does 
not annul, but realizes himself in the finite, 
and that the highest revelation of God is the 
life of God in the soul of man; and, on the 
other hand, that the finite rests on and 
realizes itself in the Infinite; and that it is 
not the annihilation, but the realization of 
our highest freedom, in every movement of 
our thought, in every pulsation of our will, 
to be the organ and expression of the mind 
and will of God." It was Calvin who said: 
"Man can only know himself through his 
knowledge of God, and can only know God 
through the knowledge of himself." 

Dr. W. T. Davison expresses a like 
thought when he says: "God does also so 
abide in the human spirit, if it will unfold 
itself to his presence, that the new life, 

[23] 



DIVIKE INSPIEATION 



distinct but not separate from the life of 
God, may be lived from Him, in Him, and 
unto Him increasingly forever." 

History itself is a great background from 
which is projected universal proof of man's 
religious, though often dim, apprehension of 
the divine. The fact, however, that such 
apprehension has much of it been dim, and 
seemingly often little rational, does by no 
means furnish a negation to the real signifi- 
cance of the cosmic phenomenon itself. Man 
has no single trait which more clearly evinces 
a universal moral kinship than his common 
religiousness. 

Belief in a supernatural Being, or beings, 
beings which in some way, or in many ways, 
may touch human life, and control man's 
destiny, has from the earliest history been 
common to all races. This belief has mani- 
fested itself among different peoples, and 
through the ages, in an indefinite variety of 
forms, forms grading all the way from the 
lowest and grossest fetichism to the loftiest 
conceptions of a monotheistic faith. The 
practice of divination in one form or another 

[24] 



INSPIRATION PROBABLE 



was well-nigh universal in all the ancient 
civilizations. Plato dejfined divination as the 
"art of fellowship between gods and men." 
Divination proceeded upon the assumption 
that the supernatural force worked through 
given rites, or the instrument used in the 
rite. It was thus, in all its phases, only an 
expression of lower forms of belief in the 
widely prevailing activities of invisible and 
ruling powers in their relations to human 
hfe. 

The world of myth, from that familiarly 
featured in the poems of Homer and in the 
Delphic and Sibylline oracles to the rudest 
fancies of the Australian bushman, is but a 
variegated history of how peoples represent- 
ing the highest and lowest intellectual and 
moral conditions have conceived of divine 
forces as working upon the human world. 

In the polytheistic faiths the functions 
which in the Christian view are attributed to 
a supervising Divine Providence are dis- 
tributed largely among numerous gods. In 
the Pagan pantheon there is one divinity 
presiding over birth, another over the ordeal 

[25] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



of death, a divinity for the domestic hearth, 
a divinity for the market-place, a divinity 
that rules the weather; innumerable divini- 
ties that haunt the starry spaces, the sunless 
depths of forests, and the cavernous deeps 
of the sea. Not to believe in the practical 
relations of the Divine to human life and 
destiny would be, and in a deeply significant 
sense, to be far behind ancient pagan 
thought. 

The Christian belief in a Divine Provi- 
dence is but an enlightened and clarified ex- 
pression of beliefs which, in one form or 
another, have been well-nigh universal con- 
cerning the relations of Divinity to human 
life. While in the recorded utterances of 
Christ the fact of Divine Providence is most 
beautifully and impressively taught, yet one 
has but to be familiar with Old Testament 
literature to realize how rich our oldest 
sacred Scriptures are in the suggestion of 
God's close relations to all the normal func- 
tions of human life. 

However wide our quest in all historic 
fields, the fact we shall more and more dis- 

[26] 



INSPIRATION PROBABLE 



cover, and which we must increasingly 
emphasize, is the miiversaUty of man's reh- 
gious nature. The rehgious expression of 
any race or people is in quality much as the 
enlightenment of the worshipers. The 
mentally benighted and ignorant will have a 
benighted and superstitious religious faith. 
The history of human worship is largely 
occupied by a sad medley of superstitious 
and irrational beliefs, rites and customs. But 
all this can in no way detract from the basic, 
essential, and universal fact of man's 
religiousness. 

The one rational conclusion must stand, 
namely, that correspondent to man's 
universal religiousness, there must be a 
Divinity, or divinities, to be worshiped — a 
Divinity, or divinities, who shall be able to 
respond to man's deepest religious needs. 
The Christian Scriptures proceed upon the 
assumption that God is the Father of the 
entire human race, and that in Jesus Christ 
he has provided a perfect Saviour, Teacher 
and Guide for all his human children. The 
conclusion must seem clear that taking 

[27] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



human nature as we know it, and accepting 
God as the kind of being so wonderfully set 
forth in the Christian Scriptures, there can 
be no saner philosophy than that which 
teaches that God has found means so to 
illuminate the minds of men as to make them 
capable of receiving the loftiest revelations 
of his character and purposes. 



[283 



CHAPTER TWO 
INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



"I think that anyone who is penetrated with the scien- 
tific spirit must assume that, as in the stellar system, so 
in the universe of matter and life and mind, there exists, 
even if beyond his imagination to grasp, a fundamental 
unity and purpose. I do not know from what source, or 
by what channels, this conviction has come to the world. 
That is a question for the metaphysician. It may be an 
intellectual inference from observation. But our inveterate 
habit of finding reasons for our 'conclusions' which were 
rooted in our minds prior to any reasons warns me that 
here also our *conclusioi^' may come first, and our reasons 
second. This conclusion, this conviction of unity, may be 
an intuition arising out of our very nature, as it is being 
slowly and unequally developed. It may itself be the 
witness of the indwelling God in our reason. It may be 
the most essential element in man. It may be the most 
real knowledg-e we possess. Whatever its origin, I believe 
it to be a growing conviction in the world of science, a con- 
viction of unity and purpose, consolidating itself in lead- 
ing minds, that is determining the form which the idea of 
revelation is now taking." 

— James Maubicg Wilson, D.D, 



CHAPTER II 
INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 

No single question perhaps furnishes a more 
decisive or valuable test of the sanity and 
quality of one's religious creed, none upon 
which modern Christian research has more 
effectively wrought, none for which there is 
more need of clarifying the view of the 
Church, than is presented in the doctrine of 
Divine Inspiration. It may also be said 
that there is no doctrine of at all equal im- 
portance which the Church-at-large has so 
little and so unsatisfactorily defined as this 
very doctrine. It furnishes a question which 
justly challenges to itself much thought and 
discussion. 

We are familiar with the terms Revela- 
tion and Inspiration. They are correlative 
terms. There can be no revelation on the 
part of God without vision on the part of 
man. God is everywhere manifest to dis- 
cerning vision. Vision is pretty nearly a 

[31] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



synonym of inspiration. It is perhaps not 
easy to improve upon Richard Rothe's defi- 
nition, which declares that revelation is 
manifestation on the part of God; inspira- 
tion is an illumination of the mind for the 
interpretation of that which is given in mani- 
festation. But this definition should doubt- 
less be applied to far other and wider fields 
of truth than appear simply in Scriptural 
revelations. It must apply wherever mind 
receives new and clear apprehensions con- 
cerning God's world. All along the ages, 
here and there, in the great humanity, God 
has given to prophet, seer, apostle, genius, a 
special endowment of vision, that thus there 
might come to mankind distinctive and in- 
creasing knowledge or revelation of Himself 
and His work. 

Doctor Sanday, himself a profound 
student of the subject, has expressed this 
thought as follows: "That vast Divine plan 
of which we see 'huge cloudy symbols' as it 
were projected into the universe takes a 
more definite shape as our gaze lingers upon 
it. We observe in it a progression. The 

[32] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



light broadens as we descend down the ages. 
But this broadening hght has not been dif- 
fused uniformly over all mankind. It has 
been concentrated or focused in particular 
races, families, and individuals. Where it 
has spread in the world at large it has spread 
as a rule from these smaller centers. There 
is an apportionment of parts in the mighty- 
drama. On the great world-stage different 
races have different functions. Functions 
which are rudimentary or only slightly de- 
veloped in the one are highly developed in 
another. It was not given to the Semitic 
race to lay foundations of science. Its 
achievements were not great in art or law 
and political organizations. The branch of 
it which has left the most enduring monu- 
ments of itself in these departments is the 
Assyrian, not the Hebrew. But for the 
Hebrew it was reserved beyond all other 
peoples to teach the world what it knows 
of Religion. From that point of view which 
we have seemed justified in taking we shall 
say that it was the instrument specially 
chosen of God for that purpose. We do 

[33] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



not deny Divine guiding in other races. Not 
wholly in the dark did men of other nation- 
alities grope after an object of worship and 
of praise. But it is from the Hebrew stock 
that we have the Bible, and the Bible is by 
general consent the highest expression, the 
most perfect document of Religion," 

God's revelation of himself in the human 
world is very much broader and more di- 
versified in character than has usually been 
recognized. The entire human world is 
God's world. The men of all nations are 
God's children. It would be a view entirely 
unworthy of the world-knowledge of to-day 
to assume that God has specially dealt with 
only one race and nation of men. This was 
the narrow view of ancient Judaism, never 
the view of the great prophets. 

God's scheme of the world has involved a 
larger function than that which was com- 
mitted alone to the Israelitish nation. Many 
and diverse elements, and from widely 
sundered and distinct sources, enter into 
God's world-scheme of human history. 
Providentially, to one nation there has been 

[34] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



assigned one mission, and to another nation 
a different mission. Greece gave to the 
world the supreme models of intellect and 
art. Rome was the creator of law and of 
ordered nationality. Her legal creations 
have gone far toward shaping the codes of 
all modern civilizations. The peoples of the 
Asiatic Orient have developed great ethical 
and mystico-religious philosophies, going as 
far in the evolution of religion as would seem 
well possible to the human mind in absence 
of such distinctive revelation as is given in 
Jesus Christ. 

Universal history, the general experiences 
of mankind, are media through which God 
has made known his purposes in connection 
with the human world. There have been 
great epochs of intellectual advancement 
and of moral uplift for the race. And who 
shall say that within and under all these 
epochs there have not been the illumination 
and upward urge of the Divine Spirit? 

Every great movement resulting in the 
enlargement of human knowledge and in the 
advancement of civilization has been char- 

[35] 



DIYINE INSPIRATION 



acterized by seer-like, by inspired, leader- 
ship. A vision was kindled in the soul of 
Columbus and a new world was discovered. 
Only recently science giving a new insight 
into nature has made its advent. But before 
its searching vision the veil which has hidden 
nature's secrets from all the ages has been 
lifted, and the dynamics of gravitation, of 
fire and flood and lightning, have surren- 
dered themselves for the uses of civilization. 
By a process gripping the world as by the 
hand of Omnipotence the entire interests 
and destinies of humanity are being mar- 
shalled toward one goal, of moral interest, 
and no living man has a vision clear 
enough to measure the divine significance 
of it all. 

It can not be rationally assumed that God 
has ever interested Himself exclusively in 
any one race or age of mankind. What 
appear to be His most signal manifestations, 
and at any time, to a particular people must 
find their real significance in relation to a 
world-humanity. Prophets and kings, seers 
and apostles, whether of Israel or of other 

[36] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



peoples, have only been actors in the great 
drama of God's eternal and unfolding pur- 
poses for the entire world of humanity. 

It has been too much the habit of Christian 
writers to assume a universal badness for 
the world lying outside the distinctive fields 
of Christian revelation. Christianity has 
been idealized as producing the loftiest 
ethical and spiritual characters, while Pagan- 
ism has been treated as though it were 
totally bad and without redeeming moral 
features. The divine excellence of Christi- 
anity has been illustrated and emphasized 
by the great saints whom it has produced, 
while the assumed total depravity of hea- 
thendom has been accentuated by citation of 
the darkest historical pictures, or by the 
holding forth of the most infamous of his- 
torical characters. This view certainly does 
not do justice either to Christianity or to 
Paganism. While Christianity doubtless 
does furnish the most perfect ideal for con- 
duct and character, and pledges withal the 
most inspiring and reinforcing aid to the 
realization of all that is good in both conduct 

[37] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



and character, yet it remains sadly true that 
in the so-called Christian communities there 
are vicious characters who seem to have im- 
bibed little moral benefit from their Chris- 
tian environment. It is also true that in the 
most outstanding Pagan ages there have 
been produced characters of loftiest quality. 
Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and 
many others might not inappropriately be 
spoken of as the great saints of Paganism. 
Running through the writings of many of 
the philosophers, both Oriental, Greek and 
Roman, there is a wealth of utterance worthy 
of the loftiest ethical thought. We get the 
most just views neither of Christianity nor 
of humanity at large by the process of con- 
trast between Christian saints upon the one 
hand and Pagan criminals upon the other. 
The real truth is, that God's Spirit has 
always been present in the world, and in all 
nations there have been men who have re- 
sponded in larger or less measure to the 
illuminations of this Spirit. "Christ's re- 
deeming work did not begin when he was 
born in Bethlehem; it had begun as the 

[38] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



Word of conscience, the Word Very nigh' 
to man, in all men, in all ages. That which 
was universal in man was manifested, con- 
centrated, in the historic revelation of Christ. 
In Him the miiversal subjective became the 
unique objective revelation. But in all time 
He was 'the light which lighteth every 
man.' " * Justin Martyr, the great Chris- 
tian philosopher, identifies Christ with the 
Divine Wisdom manifested in all ages and 
among all people, the Teacher of Orpheus 
and Socrates, as well as of Abraham and 
Moses. The Incarnation, in his view, is but 
the culmination of the many evidences of 
the presence of the Logos ; wherever he saw 
goodness or wisdom there he recognized the 
person of Christ. 

If Christianity utters a successful mis- 
sionary message, it is so because God has 
prepared the way for its word even in the 
hearts of the heathen. "History proves that 
nations differ in degrees of spiritual insight 
and therefore as media of revelation to the 
world: But history does not prove that they 



* James Maurice Wilson, D.D. 

[39] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



differ in kind.'' Mankind in its moral con- 
stitution is a unity, and while some peoples 
are more spiritually advanced than are 
others, yet God by the Inspirations of his 
Spirit has given place for all peoples in the 
great partnership for preparation for the 
final world-kingdom of His Son. 

Of the historical development of God's 
world-plans men, for the most part, have 
maintained only the most partial and provin- 
cial notions. Historically the human mind 
has looked at God's moral plan with a 
measurement much akin to that with which 
the material universe, until very recently, 
has been conceived. A flat earth and a low- 
arching sky, a sky hung with lamps to pierce 
the gloom of the night, may fittingly sym- 
bolize the ages-long view which the average 
thought has taken of the surrounding spaces. 
In the light of the knowledge which we now 
have of the measureless immensities, of the 
literally unnumbered worlds and systems 
that float in the fathomless spaces, this view 
is made to seem puerile and foolish. But it 
is not more puerile and inadequate than the 

[40] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



views which multitudes caUing themselves 
Christians have habitually taken of God's 
moral and spiritual purposes concerning our 
human world. With amazing confidence 
and presumption, men have assumed to 
bound and define, as though they were some 
measurable geographical divisions, the pur- 
poses of the Infinite. Human narrowness 
is apt to be as dogmatic as it is essentially 
pitiable. The Jews thought that Jehovah 
was quite exclusively interested in the Jewish 
people. Calvin made God responsible for 
the "decretum horribile" which ruthlessly 
foreordained uncounted multitudes of the 
human race to hopeless and eternal tortures. 
The attempt to enumerate the irrational 
dogmas which have found hospitality in the 
Church to the crippling of its own libertj^, 
and to the blinding of its own vision, would 
prove a task at once wearisome and hope- 
less. God's thought of humanity is cosmic. 
His Fatherhood is over all the children of 
men. His Providence presides over all 
races. His Purposes are beneficent toward 
all mankind: 

[41] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



"For the love of God is broader 

Than the measure of man's mind. 
And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind.'* 

The Kingdom conception of Christ is one 
that is receiving increasing emphasis in 
present-day Christian thought. It is com- 
ing to be more and more believed that God 
purposes to transform this world itself into 
a fit habitation for a saintly citizenship. 
This means that the practical problems of 
civilization must have a large place in God's 
world-scheme. It means that all truth which 
ministers to human weal, to man's intellec- 
tual and moral progress, must be domesti- 
cated and coordinated to place in the work- 
ing law of the Kingdom. It means that 
science, invention, art, learning, wealth, all 
agencies which may be made to enhance 
human values, are to be made tributary to 
the Kingdom. It must certainly mean that 
if God ever imparts the spirit of inspiration 
in the interests of human enlightenment. 
He is likely to impart this same spirit in 
diversified ways as serving the innumer- 

[42] 



INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL 



able interests of His universal purposes 
toward man. 

Far from assuming that all factors in- 
cluded in God's scheme of the world have 
equal values, or are of the same relative im- 
portance, yet it seems not unreasonable that 
the Spirit of divine illumination has con- 
tributed to the discovery of every new 
agency or force which has entered into the 
development or unfolding of God's pur- 
poses for mankind. It is the spirit in man 
to which the inspiration of the Almighty 
giveth understanding. It may be said that 
every new truth, every new invention, each 
new discovery, by which the race makes real 
progress has come as in a flash of inspira- 
tion to seer-like minds. The unilluminated 
mind never sees, never discovers the condi- 
tions of progress. The seers only, men with 
quickened vision, have always piloted the 
forward movements of the race. God's in- 
spirations are just as surely written in, are 
ministrant to the movements of history, as 
that they find expression in any sacred Bible 
of humanity. 

[43] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



God is behind the great world-movements, 
directing them all. His controlling inspira- 
tions are in all their atmospheres. An ulti- 
mate world-civilization means to God some- 
thing infinitely more than can either be 
traced or measured in Hebrew history alone 
considered. 



[44] 



CHAPTER THREE 
HEBREW INSPIRATION 



"The Old Testament supplies the chief part of the pre- 
Christian history of Christianity. Without the presentation 
of such a history Christianity is left with a serious gap in 
the evidences of its truth. If no worthy Prceparatio of 
Christianity can be pointed out then the proof that Chris- 
tianity is part of the Universal Divine Providence is left 
seriously incomplete, and therefore weak. But we find 
in fact on the contrary in the Old Testament an expanding 
revelation of Truth, which the experience of more than 
eighteen centuries shows to have found its only fitting con- 
tinuation in the Christian faith. . . . The Old Testament, 
besides containing the chief part of the History of the Divine 
Preparation for Christianity, points to other parts of the 
same History, which it does not itself contain. As we 
study the Old Testament more deeply, and compare its 
teaching with the information we possess regarding Gentile 
Religions, we are led upwards to a still grander view, a 
more complete view, of the work of Divine Providence in 
preparing for the Gospel. The points of resemblance be- 
tween the revealed religion of the Hebrews and the other 
religions of the pre-Christian world, which a comparison 
yields, supply a proof that the Almighty Father provided 
in addition to one 'tutor' for the Hebrew people many other 
tutors to lead the nations of the world to the same Christ.'* 
— William Emeby Barnes, D.D. 



CHAPTER III 

HEBREW INSPIRATION 

In the previous chapter the claim is made 
that God in His providence is dealing with 
the entire hmnan world, and not solely or 
exclusively with any one race of mankind. 
It is assumed that the Spirit of Divine 
Inspiration is a pervasive and continuous 
presence, itself essentially creative of the 
intellectual atmospheres and conditions out 
of which are born the world's real advances. 
In the interests of correct thinking it should 
perhaps be emphasized that the spirit of in- 
spiration may apparently work in quite dis- 
tinct spheres of activity. The mission of the 
Spirit in directing and shaping the general 
movements of civilization may be in seeming 
and manifestation quite different from the 
process of revelation to or inspiration in the 
individual soul. In the individual the Spirit 
imparts a sense of the pardon of sin, begets 
a consciousness of fellowship with God, de- 

[47] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



velops certain high and holy fruits of char- 
acter. If it is the Spirit's mission upon the 
one hand to develop the individual into a 
saint, it is not less also His mission through 
agencies which He shall direct to shape the 
outwardly environment as a fit habitation 
for saintly citizenship. As an easy accom- 
modation to our thought it might be declared 
that the Spirit works in two spheres — the 
one in the outer realm of civilization, the 
other in the inner realm of individual moral 
character. But these spheres are comple- 
mentary; they merge in a final consumma- 
tion of one divine purpose. 

God deals with our world by historic 
processes. His method is one of gradual 
unfoldment of purpose. He uses as His 
agencies both nations and individuals. In 
the historic preparation for His supreme 
spiritual purpose, a purpose to be finally 
consummated in Jesus, the Christ, He chose 
largely, as the channel of revelation to the 
world, a distinctive nation — the Hebrew 
people. 

When it comes to the question of the evo- 

[48] 



HEBREW INSPIRATION 



lution of a distinctive spiritual revelation, a 
revelation adequate to the religious needs of 
mankind, we must undoubtedly turn our 
vision to the pathway of the Hebrew seers, 
a pathway which leads to Bethlehem, to Cal- 
vary, to the ascension of Bethany, to Pente- 
cost. A supreme moral need of the world 
is met only in the kind of revelation recorded 
in the Bible. Whatever other witness of 
Himself God may have given to the nations, 
it would seem that to patriarch, prophet and 
apostle there was imparted the one revela- 
tion which is supremely needed for the moral 
and spiritual illumination and guidance of 
mankind. But on the plane, and within the 
purpose, of highest spiritual revelation, 
surely it must be true that if God chose one 
nation to be the special agent of His mani- 
festation of Himself to all mankind, then, 
with all mankind aside from this select na- 
tion. He must also have been dealing in some 
form preparatory to the final reception of 
this manifestation. 

History is replete with lessons showing 
that God has not left Himself without 

[49] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



witness in any nation. But for vivid illus- 
tration of how God has related and subor- 
dinated great historic movements to His 
spiritual purposes, we can ask for no more 
outstanding history than that which pre- 
ceded and surrounded the period of the 
Advent. Beginning with Alexander the 
Great, a new era of cosmopolitanism was 
introduced into the world. Greece had made 
her wonderful history, in placing herself in 
literature and the aesthetic arts in a rank that 
has been the despair of all subsequent ages. 
But Greece was aristocratic, exclusive, self- 
contained, wanting no neighbors, despising 
all the world outside of her own narrow 
borders as barbarian. Greece went to pieces 
through the destruction and exhaustion of 
internecine wars. Alexander of Macedon, 
the more brilliant son of a great father, by 
the force of sheer genius, annexed the 
Grecian territory to his own, and at the 
head of a ''Grecian" army pushed his famed 
march into the Orient. In a series of phe- 
nomenal victories he urged his triumphant 
way into northern India. His career was 

[50] 



HEBREW INSPIRATION 



short, but he left behind him a changed 
world. He had broken down the commer- 
cial barriers between Europe and the Orient. 
He had made forever ineffective the oft- 
repeated menace of Oriental invasion and 
domination of the Grecian territories. He 
had destroyed the wall of an exclusive and 
dead conservatism in the East, and had made 
room for the play of a new atmosphere of 
freedom and largeness in all the countries 
of his conquest. By humane treatment of 
the conquered, and by the institution of far- 
reaching new and wise policies of inter-racial 
intercourse he prepared the way for a new 
brotherhood of man. 

The heirs of his great achievements, lack- 
ing his constructive genius, fell to quarreling 
among themselves, and in due sequence 
their successors and their territories fell an 
easy prey to the growing and all-conquering 
Roman. In the meantime the Romans had 
fought the battles which made them masters 
of countries around the Mediterranean, and 
now they were to assume the undisputed 
mastery of the world. The Roman Empire 

[51] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



at and prior to the advent of Christ pre- 
sented a vast amalgam of conditions new to 
humanity. It presented in a widely dis- 
tributed way an intermingling of four dis- 
tinct races — the Jew, the Greek, the Roman, 
and the Oriental. The Roman world was 
the inheritor of all that was noblest in 
Grecian art and literature. Throughout 
her wide dominions the common thought was 
tempered by the interfusion of the thought 
of all peoples. It was the policy of Rome 
to give place and hospitality in her Pantheon 
to the gods and religions of all conquered 
provinces. The great mercantile centers 
became the seats of enormous wealth. It 
was an age of luxury and of unbridled 
sensuality. The prevailing view of the 
philosophic mind toward current religions 
was one of utter skepticism, not to say of 
disgust. The polytheistic faiths had failed 
to satisfy the felt needs of the people. The 
hordes of the poor were in a condition of 
spiritual desolation, to the needs of which 
no known religious altars responded. The 
luxury of sensualism had palled on the rich. 

[52] 



HEBREW INSPIRATION 



The goddess of pleasure was powerless to 
stir the blase Epicurean to the sense of any 
new charm. The Roman world of the time 
of Christ was a cosmopolitan, a powerful, a 
rich, an art-crowned, a corrupt world. In 
her cities were all religious altars. She was 
rich in philosophers, poets and artists. Her 
architecture as displayed in its present ruins 
has remained a standing wonder of the cen- 
turies, but that Roman world was weary, 
sad, despondent, hopeless — a world waiting 
for the advent and voice of a new evangel. 

There were other great features of 
preparation for the new Dispensation from 
Heaven. It was a period of profound world- 
peace. The scepter of Roman law held 
orderly sway over all lands. The military 
roads were in readiness, as though to facili- 
tate the victorious chariots of the coming 
Kingdom. The Greek language was widely 
diffused, and was the best vehicle humanly 
prepared for voicing and preserving the mes- 
sage of the new Gospel for mankind. Truly 
God had been moving the nations toward 
some great fulfillment. The fullness of time 

[53] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



had come. The clock of Divine Providence 
had struck the supreme hour of the world's 
destiny. 

But these most significant historic move- 
ments converging around the period of the 
Incarnation are but prominently illustrative 
of how God all through the ages has shaped 
the course of history and prepared the minds 
of the nations in the interests of the King- 
dom of His Son. 



[54] 



CHAPTER FOUR 
THE BIBLE 



"There is no doubt a good deal of secular history, as we 
may call it, in the Bible, but its importance lies in the fact 
that it provides the atmosphere and the background for 
the history of revelation. It is of interest to trace the growth 
and fortunes of the Hebrew people just as it is to follow 
the development of Greece or Rome; and the Old Testament 
supplies us with much material for that purpose. But we 
ought not to put the emphasis there, it should be placed 
rather on the spiritual truth and light which flow along 
this channel. And the history is unique. We ought not to 
doubt that in other religions than Judaism or Christianity 
there has been a real activity of the Holy Spirit. The 
more triumphantly sure we are that our own religion is 
supreme, the more generous we can afford to be in our recog- 
nition of other religions. But since for us Christianity is 
the absolute religion, while the religion of Israel is the Di- 
vinely ordered preparation for it, the literature which conveys 
to us the knowledge of God's supreme self-manifestation 
must outweigh in religious value all other literature." 

— Professor Arthur S. Peake, D.D, 



CHAPTER ly 

THE BIBLE 

We think and speak of the Bible as the 
inspired Book containing the Hebrew reve- 
lation. What is the Bible? St. Matthew 
has given us a definition of the Old Testa- 
ment which, for our present purposes, we 
may very readily accept. In the genealogy 
with which he opens his Gospel, he confines 
himself strictly to Hebrew history, to that 
historic movement which begins with 
Abraham and ends with Christ. In this 
period, he says, there were forty-two gener- 
ations — fourteen from Abraham to David; 
fourteen from David to the Exile ; and four- 
teen from the Exile to Christ. If one were 
to deal in a small kind of criticism, some 
rather singular results would appear on the 
surface of this statement by St. Matthew. 

If we were to insist that the period from 
Abraham to Christ was literally covered by 

[57] 



DIYINE INSPIRATION 



forty-two generations, then, according to the 
best chronology at our command, the first 
fourteen generations, from Abraham to 
David, would average each a life of eighty- 
three years; the second fourteen genera- 
tions, from David to the Exile, a life of 
thirty-three years ; the third fourteen gener- 
tions, from the Exile to Christ, forty-two 
years. Matthew's statement, analytically 
literalized, yields some improbable historical 
results. I think, however, that we do entire 
injustice to Matthew's purpose when we 
force this sort of construction upon his state- 
ments. He has no purpose of dealing 
strictly with mathematical statistics; but in 
a free and oriental manner he conceives of 
the entire stretch from Abraham to Christ 
as being divided into three periods of twice 
seven generations each. 

The fact of basic significance, however, is 
that Matthew conceives of the period from 
Abraham to Christ as historic. It is the 
period in which is summed up God's historic 
preparation through the Hebrew race for 
the coming of Christ. Let us think, then, as 

[58] 



THE BIBLE 



evidently Matthew did, of the Old Testa- 
ment as giving distinctively a historic record 
of God's method in preparing the world for 
the Advent of His Son. 

As history, dating from Abraham, the 
Old Testament covers thousands of years. 
As history, it features a great variety of 
views and of values. It covers periods dark, 
barbarous, idolatrous. Its moral geography 
points to regions and ages benighted, to 
wildernesses, to morasses, to wide plains un- 
fruitful and barren. But there are also pic- 
tured to us high and fruitful table-lands and 
mountain ranges crowned with great sum- 
mits, all made radiant in the light of loftiest 
revelation. With all that is dark and for- 
bidding, we can see that this history, by 
processes which are progressive and un- 
erring, leads us on and up until at last it 
brings us to the very gateways of God's 
divinest purposes for humanity. 

If there be in human literature a volume 
whose unique and unmatched qualities en- 
title it to be regarded as a distinct record of 
God's revelation of Himself to men, that 

[59] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



volume is pre-eminently the Bible. There is 
no book which has made so universal, so 
ages-long appeal to all that is noblest in 
human nature as the Bible. Yet the Bible 
wins its way only to natures which have a 
vital susceptibility or moral responsiveness 
to its message. It is unique in that it makes 
appeal to the whole nature, not simply to 
the intellect, but to the imagination, the 
heart and the conscience. 

The Bible is a book which in all phases of 
human experience, and in every age of its 
history, has ministered in richest inspiration 
to the souls of men. To the martyr it has 
given the confidence of a divine and sustain- 
ing presence. Before the vision of buffeted 
and toiling pilgrims it has lifted the portals 
of blessed hope and of peaceful rest. It 
has uttered sustaining messages of triumph 
in the ears of the dying, and it has brought 
the soothe of comfort to multitudes in be- 
reavement. It has sweetened and purified 
the domestic atmospheres of numberless 
homes, and has shone as a lamp of hope and 
cheer upon the pathway of unnumbered lives 

[60] 



THE BIBLE 



who otherwise would have walked in dark- 
ness. The appeal of the Bible to man's 
moral responsiveness is such as it is in the 
power of no other book to present. 

A mind with the unusual insight and re- 
flective power of Coleridge could testify: 
"In every generation and wherever the light 
of revelation has shone, men of all ranks, 
conditions, and states of mind have found in 
this volume a correspondent for every move- 
ment toward the better felt in their own 
hearts, the needy soul has found supply, the 
feeble a help, the sorrowful a comfort." He 
declares that the Scriptures, as no other 
literature, found him, brought to him a sense 
of the presence of God. 

Dr. W. Robertson Smith says: "If I am 
asked why I receive the Scriptiu'e as the 
word of God, and as the only perfect rule 
of faith and life, I answer with all the fathers 
of the Protestant Church, Because the Bible 
is the only record of the redeeming love of 
God, because in the Bible alone I find God 
drawing near to man in Jesus Christ, and 
declaring to us in him His will for our sal- 

[61] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



vation. And this record I know to be true 
by the witness of His Spirit in my heart, 
whereby I am assured that none other than 
God himself is able to speak such words to 
my soul." 

Dr. George Adam Smith, a man most 
accredited in the world of critical Biblical 
scholarship, in speaking of the Old Testa- 
ment as dealing with a direct revelation of 
God, of His ethical character in His rela- 
tion to men, does not hesitate to express the 
conviction that for this distinctive setting 
forth of the Divine character only one cause 
can be assigned, namely: "that in the reli- 
gion of Israel, as recorded in the Old Testa- 
ment, there is an authentic revelation of the 
one true God.'' 

Dr. William Sanday, one of the most 
eminent of English Biblical scholars, says: 
"There is impressed upon the writings which 
make up the Bible a breadth and variety, an 
intensity and purity of religious life, that are 
without parallel in any other literature in 
the world. That is the fact which we seek to 
express in the doctrine of Inspiration. We 

[62] 



THE BIBLE 



know no other explanation for it than a 
special action of the Spirit of God." 

Heine, the genius and poet, was a some- 
what nondescript, at least an eccentric, 
character. He characterized his own mixed 
moods as representing those of "a, beast, a 
devil, a god." But however much he de- 
spised and hated anything akin to priest- 
craft, he was the friend of true religion, and 
there is evidence that he himself was the 
subject of a transforming religious experi- 
ence. Describing the source of his own con- 
version, he says: ''It was neither a vision, 
nor a seraphic revelation, nor a voice from 
Heaven, nor any strange dream or other 
mystery that brought me into the way of 
salvation, and I owe my conversion simply 
to the reading of a book. A book? Yes, 
and it is an old homely looking book, 
modest as nature, and natural as it is; a 
book that has a work-a-day and unassuming 
look, like the sun that warms us, like the 
bread that nourishes us; a book that seems 
to us as familiar and as full of kindly bless- 
ing as the old grandmother who reads daily 

[63] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



in it with dear, trembling lips, and spec- 
tacles on her nose. And the book is called 
quite shortly — the Book, the Bible. Rightly 
do men also call it the Holy Scriptures; for 
he that hath lost God can find Him again 
in this book, and towards him that has never 
known God it sends forth the breath of the 
Divine Word." 

Professor Huxley was an apostle of 
Agnosticism, but the unique ethical pre- 
science and social justice of the Bible could 
not escape his keen vision. He says: 
''Throughout the history of the Western 
world the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, 
have been the great instigators of revolt 
against the worst forms of clerical and polit- 
ical despotism. The Bible has been the 
Magna Charta of the poor and of the op- 
pressed ; down to modern times no state has 
had a constitution in which the interests of 
the people are so largely taken into account, 
in which the duties, so much more than the 
privileges, of rulers are insisted upon, as 
that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy 
and Leviticus; nowhere is the fundamental 
[64] 



THE BIBLE 



truth that the welfare of the State in the 
long run depends upon the uprightness of 
the citizen so strongly laid down. Assuredly 
the Bible talks no trash about the rights of 
man; but it insists upon the equality of 
duties, on the liberty to bring about that 
righteousness which is somewhat different 
from struggling for 'rights'; on the frater- 
nity of taking thought for one's neighbor as 
for one's self." 

That acute Frenchman, at once philo- 
sophical, critical, evangelical, Auguste Sa- 
batier, has written: "What other book 
like this can awaken dumb or sleeping con- 
sciences, reveal the secret needs of the soul, 
sharpen the thorn of sin and press its cruel 
point upon us, tear away our delusions, 
humiliate our pride, and disturb our false 
serenity? What sudden lightnings it shoots 
into the abysses of our hearts ! What search- 
ings of conscience are like those which we 
make by this light? And when we have 
gained a right apprehension of our short- 
comings and spiritual poverty, when the 
need of pardon, the hunger for righteous- 

[65] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



ness, and the thirst for hfe torture the soul 
to desperation, what other voice than that 
of the Son of man has power to allay our 
pain, convince us of the love of the Father, 
the love that passeth knowledge, in which all 
shame and remorse are swallowed up, and 
the flame of a holy life is kindled in the soul? 
The word which pierced us like a sharp 
sword now sheds itself like balm over all our 
wounds, like consolation over all our sorrows. 
It becomes a source of inward joy, a strength 
for life, and a hope which shines beyond 
death itself. These experiences, moreover, 
are facts. This light shining into the dark- 
ness of the inner life is a fact ; this repentance 
and confusion, this spiritual new birth, these 
aspirations toward goodness and toward 
God, this shame of hidden sin, this thirst for 
eternal life, are facts. The power which 
produces such effects is also a fact. The 
word which draws us so irresistibly to God 
and so invincibly attaches us to Him can 
come from none but Him. And it does not 
depend upon any particular dogma. Some 
who have passed through these moral experi- 

[66] 



THE BIBLE 



ences have found no difRculty in following 
to the end the results and consequences of 
historic criticism, and abandoning the super- 
natural notion of the Bible, yet have none 
the less preserved for the Bible an inde- 
structible sentiment of tender respect and 
rehgious veneration." 

Professor James Orr closes his valuable 
book on "Revelation and Inspiration" with 
the following statement : "In the last resort, 
the proof of the inspiration of the Bible — 
not, indeed in every particular, but in its 
essential message — is to be found in the hfe- 
gi^dng effects which that message has pro- 
duced, wherever its word of truth has gone. 
This is the truth in the argument for in- 
spiration based on the witness of the Holy 
Spirit. The Bible has the quahties claimed 
for it as an inspired book. These quahties, 
on the other hand, nothing but inspiration 
could impart. It leads to God and to Clirist ; 
it gives hght on the deepest problems of life, 
death and eternit}^; it discovers the way of 
dehverance from sin; it makes men new 
creatures; it furnishes the man of God com- 

[67] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



pletely for every good work. That it pos- 
sesses these quahties history and experience 
through all the centuries have attested; its 
saving, sanctifying, and civilizing effects 
among all races of men in the world attest 
it still. The word of God is a 'pure word.' 
It is a true and 'tried' word; a word never 
found wanting by those who rest themselves 
upon it. The Bible that embraces this word 
will retain its distinction as the Book of 
Inspiration till the end of time." 

To these strong testimonials a multitude 
of others could be added. But these would 
seem sufficient to indicate at least that the 
Bible draws to itself such proofs of moral 
and spiritual inspiration as can be com- 
manded by no other literature. 



[68] 



CHAPTER FIVE 
SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



"The contents we put into a doctrine, or our way of think- 
ing of it, necessarily vary with our own mental and moral 
development. In the very nature of the case this cannot 
be escaped. An old scholastic maxim has it, ^Whatever is 
received, is received according to the nature of the receiver.' 
Which means simply that our understanding of things 
depends upon our mental make and mental stage. We 
have had the Bible with us now for many hundreds of years, 
but there has been a most distressing slowness in under- 
standing it. Its spiritual doctrines have been warped and 
distorted into some likeness of the student, and manifestly 
the fact could not be otherwise. A glance at the history 
of interpretations shows how men have read their own 
notions into the Bible. It is plain, then, that the possession 
of the Bible in no way removes the fact that this is a chang- 
ing world in religious thought as well as in other things." 
— Professor Borden Parker Bowne, LL.D. 



CHAPTER V 

SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 

The Bible can never be robbed of its place 
as the unique and supreme record of God's 
progressive ethical and spiritual revelation 
of Himself to the world. It was both natural 
and doubtless ine^dtable that around so 
wonderful a book there should gather 
theories and philosophies many of which in 
the hght of growing knowledge should prove 
untenable and untrue. A multitude of be- 
liefs, many of them quite absurd, have 
arisen in connection with the question of 
the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. A 
study of this field would prove interesting 
as illustrating how the progress of enlighten- 
ment eliminates from accredited thought 
many views which have seemed to hold a 
secure place in the former beliefs of man- 
kind. 

Many have believed in its verbal inspira- 
tion as literal as though God dictated every 

[71] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



word, using the human writer only as an 
automaton. This view, however, is distinc- 
tively neither Hebrew nor Christian. From 
immemorial times it has been shared by the 
heathen seers concerning the utterances of 
their oracles. 

It has been held that when God imparts 
an inspiration He displaces for the time being 
the human spirit from the body, the assump- 
tion being that the divine and human spirits 
could not dwell together at the same time in 
the same body. This view also is certainly 
as much pagan as the product of Christian 
thought. Plato's idea of inspiration was of 
something taking place when one is not 
clearly in possession of his own faculties. 
He says : "'No man, when in his wits, attains 
prophetic truth and inspiration; but when 
he receives the inspired word, either his in- 
telligence is enthralled in sleep, or he is 
demented by some distemper or possession.'' 
He classes inspiration as one of the four 
forms of madness. 

Athenagoras says of the prophets that, 
"while entranced and deprived of their 

[72] 



SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



natural powers of reason by the influence of 
the Divine Spirit, they uttered that which 
was wrought in them, the Spirit using them 
as its instruments, as a flute-player might 
blow a flute." Philo says : ''The understand- 
ing that dwells in us is ousted on the arrival 
of the Divine Spirit, but is restored to its 
own dwelling when the Spirit departs, for 
it is unlawful that mortal dwell with 
immortal." 

It has been taught that to Adam in Eden 
was given the Hebrew text even to the vowel 
points. It seems historically clear, however, 
that the vowel points as used in the modern 
study of Hebrew were not even invented 
until some time after the fourth century of 
the Christian Era. Aside from this, did 
Adam really know Hebrew? 

An old tradition had a wide prevalence 
that during the Exile the books of Moses 
were lost and that they were reproduced by 
Ezra through the Holy Ghost. 

Among the Alexandrian Jews it was 
traditionally believed that the seventy who 
translated the Old Testament into Greek, 

[73] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



each working separately from the other, 
were so divinely directed that each produced 
a translation identical with that of every 
other man. When we consider the many 
variations and even mistranslations of the 
Old Testament which the Septuagint con- 
tains, it would seem singular that the 
Spirit did not more accurately direct the 
mind of each of these seventy (seventy-two) 
men. But the great Augustine gets past 
this difficulty by declaring that the numerous 
deviations from the original which the Sep- 
tuagint shows were divinely superintended 
in order to adapt the Scriptures to the 
heathen mind. 

We know not only that the Septuagint 
as a translation of the original Hebrew is 
very faulty, but it also contains several sec- 
tions which do not appear in our Hebrew 
Bible. Yet, with all this, the Septuagint 
was the Bible practically in use by the New 
Testament writers. We must assume that 
Paul knew Hebrew, but nearly all of his 
quotations from the Old Testament, of which 
there are more than seventy, are from the 

[74] 



SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



Septuagint, and in some instances where 
the Septuagint does not represent the 
original thought. James and Peter invari- 
ably used the Septuagint for their Old 
Testament references. There is every 
reason to suppose that the Bible constantly 
in use by Peter, James, and Paul was the 
Greek version and not the Hebrew original. 

Calvinism as a system of theology is 
largely decadent and receives very little en- 
dorsement in the world of present theological 
thought, but none are so rash as to berate 
either the mental acuteness or scholarship 
of John Calvin. He says that in the matter 
of minor differences in New Testament ex- 
pression, ''The apostles have not been so 
very scrupulous." But he also says he does 
not worry himself about this. 

There is an old Church fable which says 
that when the Council of Nice would decide 
as to the books which were really canonical 
all of the books were placed near an altar 
and prayer being offered that God would 
decide between them, immediately the true 
canonical books of Scripture jumped up on 

[75] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



the altar and the others remained quietly 
upon the floor. 

Down to the very close of the nineteenth 
century, the Greek language of the New 
Testament was looked upon as representing 
a special and distinct department of Greek 
letters. The New Testament, linguistically 
and grammatically considered, clearly repre- 
sents a different type of literature from that 
which is furnished in the standards of class- 
ical Greek. This fact is so patent that for a 
long time the language of the New Testa- 
ment has been specially designated as "New 
Testament Greek." 

Some of the advocates of a "mechanical 
inspiration" have undertaken to make much 
of this seeming peculiarity of New Testa- 
ment Greek in support of their view. It 
has been stoutly argued that it was a fit- 
ting and providential thing that the revela- 
tion of the New Testament should be set 
forth in a language free from the contami- 
nation and profanation of contact with that 
which had been employed in secular writ- 
ings. The New Testament, it was claimed, 

[76] 



SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



was furnished in "the language of the Holy 
Ghost." 

Thanks, however, are now due to the 
researches of such eminent specialists as 
Adolf Deissmann, J, Hope Moulton, and 
others for acquainting the world with the 
fact that New Testament Greek, so far from 
being the isolated and unique language 
which we have been for so long taught to 
believe, was simply the language of the 
people, the ordinary vernacular Greek 
spoken in the Gr^co-Roman divisions of the 
Empire "at the period of New Testament 
writings." 

From a great mass of recorded beliefs as 
pertaining to the character and inspiration 
of the Bible, I call attention to but one more 
illustration. The Council of Trent, meeting 
in 1546, pronounced "anathema" against all 
who did not accept as "sacred and canonical" 
the Scriptures as set forth in the "Old Vul- 
gate Latin Edition." It is well known by 
modern scholars that the Latin text so highly 
extolled by this Council was an exceedingly 
defective rendering of both the original 

[77] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



Hebrew and Greek, often containing gross 
mistranslations. Yet this was the author- 
itative Bible of the Roman Church in the 
sixteenth century. Concerning the Council 
of Trent itself, Bishop Westcott is authority 
for the following characterization: "'This 
fatal decree, in which the Council, harassed 
by the fear of lay critics and grammarians, 
gave a new aspect to the whole question of 
the Canon, was ratified by fifty-three prel- 
ates, amongst whom there was not one 
German, not one scholar distinguished for 
historical learning, not one who was fitted 
by special study of the subject in which the 
truth could only be determined by the voice 
of antiquity/' 

In this general connection, it is well to 
remind ourselves of some of the general con- 
ditions of the times. At the period when 
the Reformation broke forth the original 
Hebrew and Greek languages of the Old 
and New Testaments were almost an un- 
known quantity even among the priesthood 
of the Church. Up to this time, the Bible, 
of course, had never been really in the hands 
[78] 



SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



of the common people, they receiving only 
such constructions of its teachings as the 
Church was pleased to give. 

With the growth of the Church, especially 
the Western Church, the time came when 
its priesthood assumed and actually exer- 
cised a supreme sovereignty over the human 
mind. The Church arrogated to itself the 
claim of sole authority and infallible wisdom 
for the spiritual direction of mankind. This 
Church, of course, both taught and practised 
much of Christian truth. But in large and 
prevailing measure it was for centuries a 
great breeding school of misguiding and en- 
slaving superstitions. It is still true that 
large sections of Christendom are under the 
nightmare spell of this spiritual despotism. 

Inheritances of this despotism are such 
gratuitous attributions as verbal and 
plenary inspiration, of inerrancy, assump- 
tions of the entire historic and scientific ac- 
curacy of Biblical statement, distrust and 
condemnation of all serious attempts to 
apply scientific methods to the study of the 
Bible. These assumptions and moods have 

[79] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



persisted as though they belonged to the 
very hfe-blood of Christianity. Much that 
is false has been cherished as though it were 
a very inheritance of good. 

The Church coupled its own teachings as 
of equal and binding authority with the 
Bible itself. As a matter of historic fact, 
the Bible was so glossed over with mythical 
and allegorical construction that its pur- 
ported message as coming from the Church 
to the people was more a patristic voice 
than the voice of the Bible itself. It was 
this condition of things which prompted 
Luther to say: ''When God's Word is ex- 
pounded and glossed by the Fathers, it is 
as when one strains milk through a coal- 
sack." Such were the prevalent conditions 
when the Reformers broke with the Church 
of Rome. 

The Reformers denied that the teachings 
of the Church were coordinate in authority 
with the Bible. They, however, carried 
right on into their own convictions and 
teachings much the same view of the Bible 
as had been held for centuries by the priestly 

[80] 



SOME INTERESTING VIEWS 



Church. The Reformers made the mistake, 
and most easily so, of assigning to the Bible 
alone the place of infallible and inerrant 
authority which the Church had so stoutly 
but falsely claimed for itself. There need 
be no misunderstanding of the fact that, so 
far as the Bible is concerned, the Reforma- 
tion left to the Church as a part of its in- 
heritance the conviction of an infallible and 
inerrant Book. 



[81] 



CHAPTER SIX 
THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 



"The Church, of Christ is in honor bound to subject our 
inherited idea about the Bible to a reverent and unsparing 
examination. The work, if it be done grudgingly or of 
necessity, will not be rightly done. The Church cannot 
afford to wait until outsiders force it upon her at the cannon's 
mouth. She must herself take the initiative. She alone can 
do the work with the patience and the reverent fearless- 
ness becoming to a study upon which incalculable conse- 
quences hang. She must study her Scriptures in the his- 
torical spirit. She must discover and bring to light their 
human authors. The Old Testament will then unfold itself 
as a trustworthy book of witness to the Hope of a Nation 
chosen to discover and publish God's deepest method in 
self-revelation. The Life of our Lord will be interpreted 
as the mind and work of the Head and Leader of the Chosen 
Nation who, taking the Nation's Hope for His Theme and 
His Task, purified and perfected it through His Cross, au- 
thenticated it and verified it through His Resurrection. 
The Old Testament and the New Testament together will 
be studied and read as the book attesting the holiness of 
the Nation, and bearing witness in the Nations that, to 
preserve themselves, they must become ministering Na- 
tions, and taking the Christ for their leader and guide, 
pray and plan for the Kingdom of God." 

— Pbofessor Henry S. Nash, D.D. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 

It is in order now to call attention to a great 
and vital change which has come over the 
world's thinking since the days of the 
Reformation, Not by any means that the 
Reformation was the cause or the initiator of 
this change. The real situation of which I 
now speak is hardly a century old. I desire 
to call attention to the place which the 
scientific spirit has assumed as controlling 
the methods of modern thinking. The 
scientific spirit calls for accurate observation 
and correct interpretation of causes entering 
into results. The true scientific spirit is 
satisfied with no results short of verified 
truth. It is its nature to beget a passionate 
love of truth for truth's sake in the minds 
of its devotees. Under this method of think- 
ing, conclusion, dogmatic statement can 
come only at the close of completed proc- 
esses. True science is not, and never can be, 

[85] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



dogmatic until it has reached a point of 
demonstration. It may have to abandon 
many hypotheses before reaching results. 
Science is not miserly of hypotheses. In 
pursuit of truth it will cheerfully abandon 
all theories until it has found the one which 
yields assured demonstration. 

When Kepler was making his baffling 
search for the laws which govern the plane- 
tary movements, he was forced to abandon 
one cherished hypothesis after another. But, 
after seventeen years of prodigious toil, he 
discovered nature's working secret, and in a 
very frenzy of triumph he declared: "The 
die is cast, the book is written to be read now 
or by posterity, I care not which. It may 
well wait a century for a reader, since God 
has waited six thousand years for a dis- 
coverer." When science has reached the end 
of its search, it can afford to be positive, for 
no power can successfully challenge its 
verified results. 

Now, it must be frankly confessed that 
the scientific method of thought is very dif- 
ferent from the method which has charac- 
[86] 



THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 



terized much of the theological expression 
with which the past has made us more or 
less familiar. Our historic theology has 
been largely based upon Augustinian or 
Arminian premises. We have been prepos- 
sessed by certain views which have been 
handed down to us as of fundamental value, 
and instead of testing these views by an 
open and unprejudiced examination of the 
Bible itself, it has been too much our habit 
to search the Bible through for proof -texts 
in support of these received opinions. A 
too common habit has been to carry to the 
Bible itself certain prepossessions which have 
filtered down to us through long ancestral 
channels. We think of the Bible writers as 
simply scribes who have recorded only oral 
dictations from God's own lips. This is the 
view which the Mohammedan has of his 
Koran. On this view, the Koran is a book 
written in the blazing light of God's throne 
and passed down by an angel into the hands 
of the Prophet. 

A dogmatic misconception of the Bible, 
based on prepossessions that will not stand 

[87] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



the scrutiny of reason, has been responsible 
for much unfortunate and even disgraceful 
controversy with, and many humihating 
theological defeats from, scientific author- 
ities. Science in the very nature of its quest 
is often called upon to revise its working- 
hypotheses, but it is always in pursuit of 
demonstrated results, and when it reaches 
these it can suffer no defeat. It is true, 
however, that almost no great scientific prin- 
ciple has ever beep announced which has not 
been confronted upon its very threshold by 
some monkish archaism of denunciation and 
opposition. This was true of Harvey's 
demonstration concerning the circulation of 
the blood, a fact of which every heart-beat 
since the days of Adam has been a procla- 
mation. It was true of the Copernican 
astronomy; true of the Newtonian law of 
gravitation; true of the science of geology; 
true of the evolutionary philosophy. The 
champions of unscientific dogma by their 
noisy attacks upon, and their sullen retreats 
from, the assured demonstrations of science, 
have furnished one of the most humiliating 

[88] 



THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE 



chapters in theological discussion. Happily, 
to the credit of modern intellect, and for the 
advancement of sane faith, the Bible is now 
more and more receiving an interpretation 
which does not put it in conflict with scien- 
tific truth. 

Whatever our prepossessions, or however 
difficult it may be for us to yield them, the 
scientific method is being reverently, most 
ably and increasing applied to the Bible it- 
self, and in this field as in every other, it is 
yielding most rich and wonderful results. 
The scientific spirit, so far as possible, ap- 
proaches the Bible without prepossessions 
and asks simply one great question: "What 
does the Bible, in the light of its own his- 
toric evolution, of its own literary and gram- 
matical genius, have to say for itself?" The 
answer to this question is varied and most 
significant. To some features of this answer 
the immediate chapters to come will be 
devoted. 



[89] 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
THE BIBLE A HUMAN BOOK 



"We cannot fail to learn that the human element in the 
Bible has been far larger and more important than ante- 
cedently we might have imagined. The water of life has 
not been conveyed through channels which have left it 
unafiFected. The human factor has here, as in so many 
other instances, cooperated with the Divine. Let us not 
be guilty of irreverently wishing that it had been other- 
wise, and let us not accuse those who emphasize it of a desire 
to belittle the Bible. Many Christians have resented any 
real insistence on our Lord's full humanity while they have 
formally affirmed it. We are, it may be hoped, wiser in 
that we have come to see that His Divinity won its fullest 
expression through the sacrifice and love which determined 
the Incarnation. Similarly we insist upon the cooperation 
of man with God in the work of salvation. So, too, we 
may be glad to recognize that men have been fellow workers 
with God in the process of revelation to a degree which 
has constantly been underrated." 

— Professor Arthur S. Peake, D.D, 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BIBLE A HUMAN BOOK 

One conclusion which has forced itself into 
recognition as a result of the critical scien- 
tific study of the Bible is, that it is in a very 
large sense a human book. If this view is 
correct, then it represents a fact to which 
the Church at large has given altogether too 
little hospitality, I confess inability to see 
how this view is, or can be, other than most 
obviously and absolutely correct. A great 
error in popular apprehension, an error for 
which those assuming the functions of Chris- 
tian teachers have been largely responsible, 
is in making the Bible the chief seat and 
source of inspiration. A book at best can 
be no more than a record. Inspiration is 
a process which can take place only in an 
intelligent soul. God as the Creator and 
Father of the human spirit has endowed that 
spirit with aptitude for knowing Himself. 

[93] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



He has made this spirit sensitive to His 
own touch, responsive to the impressions of 
His own infinite knowledge and perfections. 
If God has ever made a revelation of Him- 
self he has made such revelation to the 
human spirit. If the Bible is a supreme 
moral and spiiritual guide, it is such because 
holy men, under the illuminating touch of 
spiritual contact with God, have undertaken 
to make a human record of these high ex- 
periences. In the measure in which these 
writers have succeeded in giving effective 
literary portrayal to these superlative ex- 
periences of their own souls, in that measure 
is the devout and sympathetic reader moved 
and uplifted by the spirit of their inspiration. 
Whatever might be the letter of a reve- 
lation, as in the Bible, it could utter in itself 
no voice of God save to the sensitized and 
responsive human spirit. As the sightless 
eye can have no vision of color, so by the 
unawakened moral sense there can be felt 
no Divine impression. God does not write 
books, and if He did, there could be no 
translation of His thought and purpose save 

[94] 



THE BIBLE A HUMAN BOOK 

by a nature spiritually responsive to the 
message given. Revelation is forever im- 
possible only as between two natures en- 
dowed with a mutual understanding of each 
other. The only significance the Bible can 
have for any man is that it is made, however 
imperfectly, the intermediary through which 
God's thought is conveyed to his own moral 
apprehension. The human soul is the audi- 
ence chamber in which alone is heard the 
voice of God. Neither priest nor altar nor 
book can have value as a substitute for this 
voice for the individual soul. As in wireless 
telegraphy there must be a receiver which is 
accurately and sensitively responsive to the 
transmitting source, else no intelligent com- 
munication can be made ; so there can be no 
revelation save to a nature which has a close 
mental and moral kinship to the Divine 
Revealer. A Divine message can receive 
translation only in a soul having responsive 
aptitudes to the Divine thought. 

God's ideal of his revealing relations to 
His people was long ago expressed in pro- 
phetic utterance: 

[95] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



"This is the covenant that I will make with the 

House of Israel, 
After those days, saith the Lord; 
I will put my laws into their mind. 
And on their hearts also will I write them; 
And I will be to them a God, 
And they shall be to me a people; 
And they shall not teach every man his fellow 

citizen. 
And every man his brother, saying. 
Know the Lord: 
For all shall know Me 
From the least to the greatest of them." 

Professor James Maurice Wilson in 
speaking of prevalent thought in the present 
day says: "The revelation of Christ is looked 
for less in a series of novel truths of any 
kind to be gathered in their final forms from 
His word, and more in His quickening and 
illuminating influence on the souls of His 
followers, continued in the world by His 
spiritual presence. It is not less Divine be- 
cause it is more continuous in its method. 
. . . The transference of the idea of Revela- 
tion from without to within has been de- 
scribed as a characteristic of Christ's teach- 
[96] 



THE BIBLE A HUMAN BOOK 

ing, and it must have startled His hearers. 
They had heard of the 'still small voice' ; of 
the word 'written in the heart.' But it was 
inconceivable to them that the sacredness 
of Jerusalem or of Gerizim as places of 
acceptable worship was not a permanent 
reality, but only a transient phase of reli- 
gious thought. The passing away of Jeru- 
salem, of the temple, of sacrifices, and 
Christ's whole treatment of tradition and 
of Scripture, must have seemed to that 
generation to be the extinction of all that 
was tangible in religion; and now, as then, 
men confuse the tangible with the real and 
thus mistake the temporary for the eternaL" 
The Bible stands, and will forever hold 
its place, as the supreme literary record of 
the highest experiences of elect souls in their 
direct realization of God. As such it holds 
the data for the highest moral and spiritual 
education of the race. But it may not be 
forgotten that at best, of these supreme ex- 
periences, the Bible is only a literary record. 
It is an accommodative attempt to portray 
through letters to the human understanding, 

[97] 



DIYINE INSPIRATION 



to fuse into the human moral f eehng, moun- 
tain-height experiences had in hours when 
in great and seeing souls there have arisen 
the most luminous revelations of God. The 
experiences alone made the record possible. 
The experiences themselves were greater, 
more luminous than it was at all possible 
for their mere records to be. But, as the 
diamond holds in itself the buried sunlight 
of ages, so these Biblical records are lumin- 
ous and inspirational with the transfiguring 
moods experienced in the divinest reaches of 
the human spirit. 

That the Bible is a record of Divine 
revelation is not a question here to be raised. 
The moral and spiritual revelation of the 
Divine character is nowhere so definitely, so 
fully, so richly recorded as in the Bible. 
But we may not forget that revelation be- 
comes effective only through inspiration. 
Inspiration means an awakened sense of the 
human vision, faculties made alert and re- 
sponsive to the higher realities, to spiritual 
truth not ordinarily discerned. Not even 
God can make a revelation of his own moral 

[98] 



THE BIBLE A HUMAN BOOK 

beauty to the soul dull and obtuse. An 
awakened and illuminated spiritual faculty 
is an absolute necessity to the discernment 
of spiritual truth. The pure in heart, souls 
that have acquired the skyward vision — these 
alone really see God. 



[99] 



CHAPTER EIGHT 
THE BIBLE NOT INERRANT 



"Criticism with a virtually unanimous voice declares 
that literary inerrancy cannot be claimed for the books 
either of the Old or New Testament. That the substance 
of the history is correct has been proved in a very remark- 
able manner by the unearthing and deciphering of long- 
buried records written by non-Palestinian races, yet confirming 
the Hebrew annals in their main particulars. But the same 
criticism which has made good use of those ancient records 
and monuments to confirm the statements of the Bible 
has also pointed out certain errors in chronology and in 
some other details. Restricting ourselves to the New Tes- 
tament and to the Gospels, and to the universally admitted 
results of criticism, it has been put beyond all reasonable 
doubt that there exist irreconcilable discrepancies between 
the four accounts of some of our Lord's sayings and actions, 
and that it is impossible to determine, save on grounds of 
probability, which Gospel we should follow." 

— Professor Marcus Dods, D.D. 

"Literary criticism commenced at an early day, and 
reached large proportions in the eighteenth century, though 
it became widely influential only in the nineteenth. Already 
by the Roman Catholics, Valla and Erasmus in the early 
sixteenth century, the process was begun, but only in a 
mild way. The early Protestant divines as a rule would 
have none of it. But in the seventeenth century the Catholics 
Simon and Le Clerc and the philosophers Hobbes and Spinoza 
made important contributions, and in the eighteenth cen- 
tury its principles were applied more or less consistently 
by Astruc in France, by Eichhorn, Herder and Ilgen in 
Germany, and by Geddes in Scotland. In the nineteenth 
century criticism both literary and historical was carried 
on with extraordinary vigor by a multitude of Biblical 
scholars both in Europe and America, and the general re- 
sult has been the undermining of the old-time view of the 
Bible as an infallible and inerrant book." 

— Professor Arthur Cushman McGiffert, D.D. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE BIBLE NOT INERRANT 

The critical scientific study of the Bible has 
yielded a demonstration in which all Biblical 
scholarship of acknowledged standing now 
concurs, namely, that in its literary, historic 
and scientific features, it is neither an iner- 
rant nor infallible Book, It must be ad- 
mitted that the idea of an infallible book is 
one which receives little favor in sanest 
modern thinking. 

The late Professor Orr, at once able and 
conservative, while stoutly supporting a dis- 
tinctive and sufficient Divine inspiration 
for the Bible, holds neither to verbal nor 
plenary inspiration in the sense in which 
these terms have usually been held. He ad- 
mits that inspiration furnishes no safe- 
guard against historic or scientific error on 
the part of the Scripture writers. He ad- 
mits that when a writer was dependent for 
[103] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



his material upon former written sources, he 
would be likely to embody the errors of 
those sources in his own reproductions. The 
great principle for which he stands, and to 
which he brings all conserving support, is 
the inerrant moral inspiration of the Bible. 
Professor A. C. McGiffert, discussing this 
general subject, says: "As a matter of fact 
even the Bible itself has gained, perhaps, as 
much if not more than it has lost, from the 
Biblical criticism of the last hundred years. 
For the widespread loss of faith in it as an 
infallible authority has not meant its con- 
demnation and rejection. With some this 
has no doubt been the result. But to multi- 
tudes it has become a far more interesting 
and living book than it was. The history 
which it records is studied with a new en- 
thusiasm and understanding, its literary 
values are appreciated as they could not be 
when it was interpreted as an authoritative 
code, and the realization of its extraordinary 
humanness has given it a satisfaction which 
it too often lacked when it was supposed to 
be the immediate product of the Holy Spirit. 
[104] 



THE BIBLE NOT INERRANT 



Read as other books are read, it appears in 
a fresh light to many to whom it was for- 
merly a sealed book, as to many others who 
found it uncongenial and even repellent. 
And what is still more, under the influence 
of the growing conception of historical 
development, and the widening range of 
spiritual sympathy which mark our age pre- 
eminently, men are coming more and more 
generally to recognize the Bible's permanent 
and incomparable spiritual worth. Though 
the whole modern world has transcended it 
at many points, it remains a unique record 
of developing religious experience, aspira- 
tion, and reflection, and it contains the 
highest gift of God to man, the gospel of 
Jesus Christ. Christians have never found 
it more helpful and inspiring than now, and 
outside the Church the characteristic attitude 
of the present day toward it is not, as it 
once was, in revolt against the extravagant 
claims everywhere made for it, contempt 
and hatred, but growing interest and respect. 
All lovers of the Bible may well rejoice and 
take heart from the existing situation." 
[105] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



An infallible book in order to be valid 
would require an infallible interpreter. It 
would need to be so complete in its revela- 
tion, and so phrased as to respond without 
ambiguity to all conditions, varieties and 
growths of the human mind. Only the most 
casual reflection is required to show the im- 
possibility of such a product. Many minds 
because of immaturity or limitations are in- 
capable of receiving such a revelation. 
Minds differ in impressions received from 
the same presentation. The Bible as we now 
have it, in important teachings, receives 
diverse interpretations at many hands. The 
theory of an infallible book makes no ade- 
quate provision for the intellectual and 
moral growth of the race. Human language 
itself needs to be constantly enriched in 
order to give adequate expression to the 
ever-enlarging knowledge and growing con- 
ceptions of mind. No vocabulary of the past 
can give complete expression to the world's 
expanding thought. And, by the way, it is 
equally clear that no theology formulated 
in the past can give adequate or satisfying 
[106] 



THE BIBLE NOT INERRANT 



expression to the growing religious thought 
of to-day. 

As we have seen, for the first fifteen cen- 
turies of the Church, the only Old Testa- 
ment practically in use was the Septuagint, 
a translation completed at different periods 
from about 300 B. C. This was the Bible 
of the Eastern Church. The Western, or 
Roman, Church, after the fourth century, 
used almost exclusively the Latin Vulgate, 
another translation. Both of these transla- 
tions were exceedingly faulty renderings of 
the original Hebrew, but a worse feature 
was that even to these faulty translations the 
people had no direct access. Before the age 
of printing there was no such thing as a 
Bible for popular reading. For a period of 
a thousand years before the Reformation the 
knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was well 
nigh a lost art. 

Erasmus, in the early period of the 
Reformation, ranked doubtless as the first 
Latin scholar of Europe, and he had per- 
haps no superiors in his knowledge of Greek. 
But even he found it exceedingly difficult 
[107] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



to secure satisfactory Greek manuscripts 
from which to make a rendering of the New 
Testament. His Greek Testament was the 
first really given to the world, and for nearly 
three hundred years it served the Church as 
the best in its possession. This Testament 
was rendered from no more than eight Greek 
manuscripts, most of them fragmentary, 
none of them perfect, all of them of late 
production. He had no complete manu- 
script of the Apocalypse. For this book 
he was dependent upon a mutilated and in- 
complete manuscript which he borrowed 
from Reuchlin. For the missing parts of 
this manuscript he made a translation into 
poor Greek from the Latin Vulgate. 
Erasmus did not have one of the four great 
manuscripts since recovered as belonging to 
the fourth and fifth centuries. 

As a matter of experience, we know that 
we are now in possession of no inerrant 
manuscripts or texts of the Bible. So far as 
original manuscripts are concerned, there is 
not one of them known to be in existence. 
Of all the later manuscripts, of which we 
[108] 



THE BIBLE NOT INERRANT 



now have recovered considerably more than 
two thousand, we know by most careful 
inter-comparison that their textual variants 
run up into very many thousands. Indeed, 
it is only after the most microscopic, 
thorough and exhaustive study of all avail- 
able sources, on historic, literary and gram- 
matical grounds, that Christian scholarship 
has been forced to abandon the hypothesis 
of Scriptural inerrancy. It is sometimes 
assumed that, whatever may be true of the 
later manuscripts, the original autographs 
were free from error. But this at best is 
only an assumption for which probably 
there is no warrant in sound reason. The 
impossibihty of embodying in human letters 
an infallible, inerrant, or sufficient revela- 
tion of God's purpose for mankind is a sane 
conclusion in which to rest. 

Now, all this is immeasurably far from 
saying that there is not in the Bible, just as 
we have it, a supreme record of God's reve- 
lation of Himself to mankind. And, what- 
ever imperfections in themselves existing 
manuscripts may reveal, it is also doubtless 
[109] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



true that owing to scholarly researches, 
prodigious and devout, the Christian world 
to-day is in possession of the nearest ap- 
proach to the original Scriptures that has 
ever thus far been possible in human history. 
There is no subject of knowledge on which 
more exhaustive and competent labor has 
been bestowed than in the effort on the part 
of a multitude of scholars to reproduce from 
all sources the original expression and in- 
tent of our sacred Scriptures. From this 
combined and distributed labor immensely 
fruitful and valuable results have come, 
placing in the hands of the ordinary reader 
of the Bible the most trustworthy rendering 
at present attainable of the original records 
of Divine Revelation. 



[110] 



CHAPTER NINE 
REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 



"The growth of religious knowledge in the world has 
consisted in the gradual passing from a more to a less im- 
perfect appreciation of God's relations with man. The 
phases of progress in the world as a whole are parallel to 
those in the development of the individual consciousness. 
It is in the light of the inner life that the external history 
becomes most intelligible. The individual passes from 
knowledge of himself as guilty, to knowledge of himself 
as recognized, as he learns to appreciate more truly the 
character of the Power not himself that makes for righteous- 
ness; and there has been a similar advance by the race in 
the capacity for apprehending the character of God. The 
possibility of change and growth among men accounts 
for the apparent inconsistency of the elements of truth 
about God which are recorded in the Bible as given in dif- 
ferent periods. Even though God is the same in all ages, 
unchanging and eternal, man's ability to grasp the Divine 
traits brought within his cognizance has improved; knowl- 
edge has increased, as the power of appreciation has 

developed." 

— Rev. William Cunningham, D.D. 



CHAPTER IX 

REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 

Another definite conclusion furnished from 
the scientific examination of the Bible is, 
that God's revelation of Himself has been 
gradual, progressing only with the growing 
insight, knowledge and apprehension of the 
race. Canon James Maurice Wilson, in his 
Cambridge Theological Essay, in speaking 
of the relation of revelation to man's grow- 
ing capacity, says: ''The thought of revela- 
tion as subjective is no new idea, though it 
presents itself once more reinforced and in 
new terms. It has, as theologians know, 
always existed side by side with the other 
view. Yet, even were it a reversal, history 
has proved the necessity of such reversals of 
theory in all departments of human thought. 
Epicycles gave way to the ellipse; vortices 
to the more subtle and less obvious laws of 
motion and gravitation; geocentric to helio- 
centric astronomy, in face of strong preju- 
[113] 



DIVINE INSi>IRATION 



dice and the evidences of the senses; atomic 
theories are already giving way to some- 
thing new. So it is in all human experience. 
The Messiah came, but not as He was ex- 
pected; the promises were not reserved to 
the children of Abraham; one interpreta- 
tion of the Atonement succeeds another. 
Our thought of the Bible is not quite that 
of our fathers. The expectation of Christ's 
speedy return was not fulfilled. There is 
nothing new in science or philosophy or reli- 
gion in a complete reversal of the interpre- 
tation of facts. There is a perpetual read- 
justment as the world swings on into fresh 
points of view. This is the lesson taught 
by the Epistle to the Hebrews. God has 
^provided some better thing concerning us.' 
And if we are distressed or angry .at new 
views, it is well for us to examine whether 
that distress is not a sign that we adopted 
our old views without much examination ; or 
whether what we thought to be our reasons 
for them have not in reality already passed 
away. We are sometimes disposed to fight 
hardest for what, if we try to handle it, we 
[114] 



REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 



find is but a shadow. . . . Consider what 
room this conception of revelation offers for 
growth and expansion, and how necessary 
this is to give unity and meaning to history. 
Millenniums have been spent in prehistoric 
gropings after God and the meaning of the 
world; millenniums under the ancient reli- 
gions of the world; a millennium or so may 
have been spent by one nation under the 
Mosaic law as a schoolmaster to bring men 
to Christ; and then it passes away, when 
Christ comes. A few millenniums more mav 
be spent as now in the training of men under 
the symbols of the external to fit them for 
the spiritual autonomy which is our acknowl- 
edged goal, the law written in the heart, 
'the measure of the stature of the fullness 
of Christ.' Nothing short of this can be 
permanent. Let us at any rate pitch our 
ideals high. The final stage of the evolution 
of the soul must be something other than a 
magnified present. It is premature to put 
a limit to our ideals. This was the mistake 
of the Jewish teachers. But Christ showed, 
and St. Paul saw, a higher truth; and he 
[115] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



taught US that what his contemporaries held 
dearest was but a parenthesis in the long 
evolution of man, the goal of which we can- 
not yet define. Such parentheses are not at 
an end, 'The end is not yet.' '' 

If we could only come to the Bible without 
crippling prepossessions we would easily see 
how God's revelation of Himself has been 
conditioned and limited by the moral igno- 
rance and undeveloped spiritual faculties of 
mankind. The Spirit of God has doubtless 
always wrought with men of all races. But 
above all ancient peoples, the Hebrew race 
displayed a genius for a high moral religion. 
Some of the distinctive representatives of 
this race reached a monotheistic conception, 
so lofty, so pure, so majestic, so command- 
ing and inspirational, as justly to enroll 
them as supreme religious teachers for all 
subsequent ages. 

But even in the case of Israel, the process 
of spiritual development would seem to 
have been so slow and obstructed as well- 
nigh to defy the Infinite patience. It was 
only after long ages of stern schooling, that 
[116] 



REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 



the nation came dominantly to hold worthy 
conceptions of the universal sovereignty, 
holiness and goodness of God. Dating from 
the distinctive emergence of Hebrew history 
and prior to the advent of Amos and that 
wonderful succession of literary prophets 
following Amos, there rise to historic heights 
great names like those of Abraham, Moses, 
Joshua, David and Elijah. Yet, it is the 
judgment of many most competent and dis- 
cerning students of Hebrew history that 
during all the ages represented by such 
names the loftiest ideas of God did not ad- 
vance beyond a henotheistic conception. 

The book of Deuteronomy doubtless 
strikes its roots in Mosaic history, but its 
lofty monotheism, its marked revision of the 
Levitical Ritual, reflect the influence of the 
great prophets, beginning with Amos, whose 
inspiration had given them a vision of the 
spirituality, holiness and righteousness of 
the sovereign God of Israel. Nowhere in 
the Old Testament does there appear so ex- 
alted and worthy conception of God, of His 
supreme greatness, of the universality of His 
[117] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



sovereignty, as in the deutero-Isaiah. But, 
so far as Israel was concerned, this lofty 
knowledge came only after centuries of dis- 
ciplinary training, only when the very 
national life was broken up, and its people 
were in captivity and exile. It was not 
until after the waiting centuries, not until 
in the "fullness of time," that God's supreme 
revelation of Himself was made in the per- 
son of Jesus Christ. 

It was in Christ that men who had eyes to 
see "beheld the glory, the glory as of the 
only begotten of the Father, full of grace 
and truth." Christ Himself was the cul- 
minating revelation of which all the moral 
evolution of Israelitish history was but the 
prolonged preparation. Christ was both 
revelation and inspiration incarnated. He 
lived in the unclouded vision of God. It 
was His mission to give a supreme revela- 
tion of God to the world. It is the super- 
lative, inimitable and unapproachable glory 
of the Bible that it furnishes so photographic 
a record of the revelation of God as mani- 
fested in Jesus Christ. Christ gives the 
[118] 



REVELATION PROGRESSIVE 



highest revelation of both God and man — 
of God as man needs to know Him ; of man 
as God would have him to be. 

But now, going back to the beginning, the 
most distinct emphasis should be put upon 
the spirit of inspiration as recording itself 
in the Biblical narratives. If it were to be 
conceded that the very earliest narratives in 
Genesis were basically selections from folk- 
lore stories which had been handed down 
from earliest times, and which were the com- 
mon property of the Semitic people and 
their neighbors, yet the real wonder is, that 
these stories as used in the Hebrew Scrip- 
tures are all made the settings for great 
monotheistic truths. These early stories of 
Genesis are certainly paralleled in substance 
in the early traditions of the Euphrates 
Valley. But here, from their very earliest 
tracings, they were all involved in poly- 
theistic and idolatrous atmospheres. How 
is it that the Hebrew seers have laid hold 
upon these same stories and separating them 
from their idolatrous associations, have made 
them the vehicles of a monotheistic faith? 
[119] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



Surely, if anywhere there was initiated a 
revelation of the true God, it would seem 
as though in their dealing with these primi- 
tive stories the Hebrew seers must have 
written under the inspiration of this revela- 
tion. 

In speaking of the Biblical narratives as 
a whole, it is clearly evident that the wealth 
of inspired sources is far from finding equal 
expression in all the products. There are 
some sections of the Bible which, for doc- 
trine, for instruction in righteousness, for 
giving wings to devotion, are very much 
richer than others. It seems absurd to 
claim, as many have mistakenly done, that 
all parts of the Scriptures are equally in- 
spired, and are alike profitable for medita- 
tion. The uncritical saint, who goes to her 
Bible for daily spiritual food, has long since 
given answer to this question. Her finger- 
marked Bible tells the story as to where she 
finds the fruitful gardens and the green 
pastures which support her devotional life. 



[120] 



CHAPTER TEN 
INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



"The life that underlies the history and doctrine of the 
Church, which has given to that history and doctrine all 
its richness and variety and its wealth of meaning, of which, 
in fact, that history and doctrine are but the translation 
into human symbols, is none other than the life of the Spirit 
of God Himself. . . . Through all the history of the Church 
we may see the working of the Spirit of God, using and 
adapting the Church to His ends, and ever making its life 
the organ through which at sundry times and in divers 
manners He manifests Himself to man. Every page in its 
long annals bears the impress upon it of His signature, and 
he that hath eyes may read therein His message. . . . To 
the student the outstanding fact about the Church through- 
out her long history is her amazing vitality. Even in the 
hours of her greatest weakness there has never been a moment 
when her spiritual life has not been overwhelmingly greater 
than all the symptoms of disease. Hence we may confidently 
claim that throughout the history of the Church, if only 
we study the broad effects rather than concentrate atten- 
tion upon the human details, as well as throughout the 
growth of doctrine, we may ever see the working of the 
Spirit of God, and behold the constant adaptation of the 
Church to His ends, the constant unfolding of the fullness 
of His ideas. And, as in the past, so in the present and 
to-morrow. We live in a new age, with new ideas surging 
up around us. To live in the past, to cling to formulas 
that, perhaps, have lost their meaning, is as impossible as 
it is valueless. But Jesus Christ is the same to-day as 
for our fathers; and by the guidance of His Spirit we may 
step out fearlessly into the uncertainties, assured that He 
will lead us into all truth provided always that we keep 
a firm hold upon the great certainty of His presence." 

— Principal Herbert B. Workman, D,D. 



CHAPTER X 

INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 

A FACT of measureless significance, a 
supreme fact, asserted in the great answer 
which the Bible gives for itself, and which 
it fully authorizes in its teachings, is that 
the Spirit of Inspiration is still a living and 
operative presence in the world. This truth 
needs both apprehension and emphasis in 
our religious faith. 

The growth and triumph of Christ's 
Kingdom are almost, if not quite, solely con- 
ditioned upon the inworking and inspiring 
energies of the Spirit in the hearts and minds 
of men. In the absence of the Spirit the 
Gospel would have no power of self-propa- 
gation. This is Christ's own teaching. He 
declared that it would be the mission of the 
Spirit when He was gone to be a constant 
revealer and interpreter of the things of His 
Kingdom. What is the meaning of Pente- 
cost? The physical Christ was not there. 
[123] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



But the Spirit came and spake unto the 
disciples as with tongues of flame, and in a 
single hour there came to these hitherto 
spiritually backward men an illumination 
which transformed them and inspired them 
with irresistible power. 

The value of the New Testament will 
remain an unmeasured quantity in the his- 
tory and life of the Christian Church. This 
Book will doubtless gather to itself increas- 
ing appreciation with the advancing cen- 
turies. But Pentecost occurred, and the 
Christian Church was an irresistible force 
long before a single line of the New Testa- 
ment was written. The continued life of the 
Church in the world is not primarily depen- 
dent upon its possession of the New Testa- 
ment. Let the inspiring Spirit be withdrawn 
and the New Testament would be a dead 
letter. On the other hand, the ablest and 
most hostile criticism of the ages has per- 
sistently set itself to the task of destroying 
the New Testament. But still the Book 
lives and continues to be published in ever- 
increasing and phenomenal numbers. Why ? 
[124] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



Because in the hearts and experiences of 
milhons of men the Spirit of Inspiration is 
vitally witnessing to the truth of the things 
taught in the New Testament. The Church 
lives, and will continue to live, not by virtue 
of the superiority of its inherent intellec- 
tuality, not because it commands any mo- 
nopoly of science, or history, or literature; 
but because there abides resident in the 
hearts of its people the living and witnessing 
Spirit of God. 

More than all, revelation through the mis- 
sion of the inspiring Spirit is a growing 
wealth in the life of Christianity. The 
world will never outgrow Christ. Infinitely 
far from it ! Christ stands at the regal sum- 
mit of human possibilities. He is in a 
supreme sense the world's Light, and Truth, 
and Life. He is the heir of all things. He 
will make universal values tributary to His 
Kingdom. Without Him there is no hope 
for humanity. 

Christ, as no other historic character, per- 
sists with ever-growing largeness before the 
mental and moral vision of mankind. For 
[125] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



His first disciples he was the subject of 
irresistible fascination and of inexplicable 
wonder. They felt the sway of His moral 
charm, they caught enough of His spirit, 
enough of the meaning of His mission, so 
that under an illuminating inspiration they 
were able to give us the matchless, the amaz- 
ing reproduction of Him which we have in 
the New Testament. The brief records of 
the New Testament are inexhaustible. 
They hold in themselves such a wealth of 
illuminating and expansive suggestion as 
to give them for all time a very chief and 
secure place among the literary sources of 
divine education for the world. But even 
so, the first gospel writers, those most closely 
companioned with Christ in the days of His 
flesh, give abundant evidence of their failure 
fully to comprehend the supreme character 
with which they dealt. 

Were it not for the writings of Paul and 
John, the New Testament would, in its 
spiritual teachings and implications, be a 
vastly different book from that which we 
now have. St. Paul, perhaps, never saw 

[126] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



Christ in the flesh. His personal knowl- 
edge of Christ came to him as a direct 
spiritual revelation, a revelation which 
flooded his capacious soul as by a direct 
outpour of Heavenly light. He has little 
to say of Christ's historic life in the flesh. 
The Christ of St. Paul is the resurrected 
and glorified Christ, a Christ always invested 
with the glory of spiritual vision. Paul, 
after the straitest sect of the Pharisees, was 
educated a Jew. It is probably not easy for 
the most perfect insight to measure the 
bondage in which his traditional inheritance 
held him. In some respects theologically 
he never emancipated himself fully from his 
rabbinical training. But in its distinctively 
spiritual aspects, Paul's conversion to Chris- 
tianity was so all-engrossing, so all-trans- 
forming, that this man trained a Pharisaic 
Jew was the first really to have a clear vision 
of the world-significance of Christianity. He 
was the first ambassador of the Kingdom to 
the Gentile world, the world of universal 
humanity. His vision became so clarified 
and enlarged that when the moral and 
[127] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



spiritual necessities of men were to be con 
sidered, when the chartered rights and privi- 
leges of all men as provided in the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ were to be measured, he saw 
neither Greek nor Jew, barbarian nor 
Scythian, bond nor free, male nor female, 
all alike being embraced in the universality 
of Christ's redemption, St. Paul was the 
first great world-interpreter of Christ's in- 
carnate mission. 

If St. John, the Apostle, was the author 
of the Fourth Gospel, this Gospel was cer- 
tainly not written until very late in an un- 
usually prolonged life. It was not written 
until its author had become greatly broad- 
ened and deepened in the knowledge and 
experiences of spiritual truth. Indeed, it 
is altogether probable that St. John himseK 
was largely influenced by the spiritual in- 
terpretations of St. Paul. He had lived to 
a period when he saw and felt the necessity 
of relating and coordinating the teachings 
of Christianity with the accepted truths of 
prevailing philosophy. 

If this Gospel was written by some later 

[128] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



author than the Apostle the same conditions 
underhe the writing. The author, whoever 
he was, was richly ripened in the spiritual 
philosophy of Christianity. In any event, 
nothing can be broader than the universalism 
which this Gospel ascribes to Christ's mis- 
sion. From eternity Christ was with God 
and was God. He was the Logos, the 
supreme expression of the eternal Divine 
Will and Reason. In His Incarnation He 
was the one and sufficient revelation to man- 
kind of the Divine Wisdom, of the Divine 
and redemptive Love. He was for all the 
past and for all the coming ages the one 
superlative embodiment of Divine Light, 
Life, and Truth for the guidance and salva- 
tion of mankind. Thus, these two writers, 
St. Paul and the author of the Fourth Gos- 
pel, have rounded out the New Testament 
by giving to Christ supreme spiritual 
sovereignty, universality, finality. 

The centuries have sped, and on the 

theater of history there has been opportunity 

for a severe testing of the principles which 

claim Christ as Author and Exemplar. In 

[129] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



the nineteen Christian centuries the face of 
the world has been radically changed, old 
nationalities have passed away, new worlds 
have been discovered, new civilizations have 
arisen and perished, new philosophies, new 
sciences dominate the thought of the world, 
the spirit of invention has given to man im- 
measurable lordship over the forces of nature 
and has gathered the whole world into one 
community of thought. It must be admitted 
that Christ historically, even at this date, 
is not universally known among men. 
Multitudes of the human family are not 
conformed to His Spirit, and are not in- 
telligently seeking to be governed by His 
teaching. These are sad admissions. But 
some facts remain outstanding. 

It cannot be disputed that the best exist- 
ing civilizations are those which most fully 
embody the principles which Christ taught. 
The happiest, most virtuous, most intelli- 
gent and prosperous communities among 
men are those in which His Gospel is most 
clearly taught. In the business world, the 
captains of industry have sometimes declared 
[130] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



that the laws of business success are not 
compatible with the teachings of Christ. But 
it is safe to say that the business communi- 
ties whose management is most divorced 
from Christian principles are communities 
characterized by most of industrial discon- 
tent, protest and turmoil. It admits of 
greatest historic emphasis, that no anti- 
Christian philosophy has ever yet furnished 
a satisfactory status quo for civilization. It 
is of equal historic validity that, notwith- 
standing all denials of Christianity, notwith- 
standing all experiments of Christless gov- 
ernment in the earth, Christianity itself and 
alone is furnishing to civilization the highest 
ideals and the highest hopes for the world's 
future. 

Other great religions than Christianity 
have made for themselves historic place. 
The human creators of these religions have 
achieved great influence and lasting fame. 
But of all creators of great religions, Christ 
alone sustains an increasing contemporary 
life in the hearts and minds of His followers. 
He alone verifies His continuous and saving 
[131] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



presence in the lives of men. A distinctive 
and supreme phenomenon of history is fur- 
nished in the fact that universally, wherever 
men have fully surrendered themselves to 
the teaching and spirit of Christ, it is their 
testimony that Christ abides a living and 
inspiring source of fortitude, of joy and of 
hope in their lives. It is moreover the con- 
fident prophecy of Christian belief that 
Christ will more and more solve the prob- 
lems of civilization, more and more leaven 
the life of mankind, until He shall finally be 
exalted as the universal moral sovereign of 
the world, to a sovereignty that shall be 
dominant in the social, the industrial, the 
mercantile, and the educational life of man- 
kind. And the great fact to be emphasized 
in all this growing sovereignty of Christ is 
that the Holy Spirit, the living Spirit of 
God, whom Christ promised to His original 
disciples, is ever aggressively active in the 
world, and ever in enlarging measure taking 
of the things of Christ and showing them 
unto men. 

Let us be under no temptation to give to 
[132] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



Christ any place less than that of His right- 
ful and eternal supremacy in God's moral 
scheme for humanity. Still, most reverently 
and most truly it may be said that Christ did 
not utter all the truth demanded by a grow- 
ing Church in a growing civilization. The 
world of the twentieth century, in the com- 
plexity of its civilization, in the wealth of 
its knowledge, in the type of its thinking, is 
well nigh a different world from that in 
which Christ lived. 

Christ did not deal with systems. He 
uttered no word in condemnation of slavery ; 
He did not lay down any system of econom- 
ics; He uttered no specific for the govern- 
ment of corporate capital or the labor union. 
He announced no law for the equitable divi- 
sion of natural wealth, for the housing of 
the aged, the sick and the unfortunate. He 
spoke no word concerning women suffrage. 
This is only to say that the present world 
faces innumerable problems the solution of 
which requires the application of highest 
ethical principles, and yet questions on which 
Christ gave no specific utterance. Christ in 
[133] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



the revelation of Himself is inexhaustible. 
It is also true that He awaits the needs of a 
given age before He manifests Himself for 
those needs. It is thus impossible that any 
one age shall fully comprehend, or exhaust, 
the potentialities of Christ. The problems 
of coming civilization may be greatly multi- 
plied as compared with those of the present, 
but there can come no social nor moral exi- 
gency of the future for which Christ in some 
new manifestation shall not show Himself 
Master. Christ in all the future ages shall 
ever remain the Emanuel, God with men. 

If it should be said that the Spirit in 
which Christ lived, the Golden Rule^ 
and the pregnant precepts which He uttered, 
furnish in themselves the basic moral solvent 
for all the problems of the present and com- 
ing civilizations, let this be accepted. But, 
even so, the presence of the illuminating and 
inspiring Spirit will need to be increasingly 
manifest in order to furnish expansion and 
application of the Christ-spirit and the 
Christ-law for the ever-growing complexi- 
ties of civilization. 

[134] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



Two things must be conceded and as- 
sumed: First, that not all inspired men are 
to discharge the same function ; second, that 
not all men Spirit-influenced can have equal 
spiritual insight. First, in the Bible the in- 
spired prophets and the inspired apostles 
have each a distinct function — a function 
different from what is possible in the most 
highly inspired men of to-day. The prophet 
was a spokesman on the pathway of God's 
preparation for the coming Christ. The 
apostle was a spokesman to all subsequent 
ages of the things which he had witnessed 
and experienced in first-hand observation 
of and companionship with Christ. 

A distinction at this point requires special 
recognition. The inspiration of both prophet 
and apostle, in their respective order, is 
vitally essential to the construction and his- 
toric sequence of revelation, of Christianity 
itself. Whatever other inspiring agencies 
or inspired workers may arise on the future 
pathway of the Church, the mission of the 
Hebrew prophets and the original Christian 
apostles will always hold a fundamental, a 
[135] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



constructive and indispensable place in the 
historic structure of Divine Revelation. So, 
if the time should ever come when 
through the illumination of the Spirit 
the Church should come to a far richer 
knowledge of spiritual truth than was ever 
in possession of prophet or apostle, yet the 
Church could never outgrow the historic 
need of both the prophetic and apostolic 
records. The inspired prophets and apostles 
wrought indispensably at the very historic 
foundations of God's Kingdom among men. 
So, whatever glory of spiritual knowledge 
or experience may come to the Church of 
the future, the inspired prophet and apostle 
will hold an imperishable place as divinely 
chosen forerunners and preparers of this 
exceeding Glory. 

Second, we may not forget, however rich 
and luminous the gifts of spiritual inspira- 
tion, that not all men will have the same 
spiritual insight, not all will be able to dis- 
charge the same spiritual function. While 
all men in the full measure of their needs 
may be partakers of the spiritual life, yet 
[136] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



not all may become equally endowed with 
the same spiritual gifts. God has always 
made a distinct selection of men to whom 
He imparts the distinctive manifestations of 
Himself. "And He gave some, apostles; 
and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; 
and some, pastors and teachers; for the 
perfecting of the saints, for the work of 
the ministry, for the edifying of the body 
of Christ: till we all come in the unity 
of the faith, and of the knowledge of the 
Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the 
measure of the stature of the fullness of 
Christ." 

In the witnessing life of spiritual experi- 
ence all believers may share ; but in the gift 
of first-hand spiritual discernment, in the 
function of spiritual interpretation, God al- 
ways has, and doubtless always will put the 
seal of his choice upon distinctive individuals. 
It will, however, remain true that the Spirit 
which inspired ancient law-giver, prophet 
and apostle — perhaps not for the same 
specific functions or ends — ^will be as essen- 
tial to Christ's growing Kingdom of to-day, 
[137] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



as to the earlier dispensations. It is the 
function of the Spirit to furnish to its sub- 
jects, generation by generation, an ever- 
enlarging apprehension of spiritual truth. 

Christianity can never outgrow Christ; 
but in human apprehension the Christianity 
of the twentieth century, in the wealth of 
its revealed knowledge, in the breadth and 
adaptiveness of its application to life, will be 
power vastly greater than that of the first 
century. The Christianity of to-day has to 
coordinate into itself a great world of knowl- 
edge which did not even enter into the dreams 
of first-century men. Modern science has 
furnished us with a great new revelation of 
God's universe, and all this, in a very vital 
sense, is a new revelation of God Himself. 
Man alone is the creature with whom God 
can have intellectual, moral and spiritual 
dealings. Man's nature is crowded with 
potentialities of divinity. But, psychologic- 
ally man is incomparably better known to- 
day than at any preceding time in human 
thought. The wide study of comparative 
religions in the light of psychological knowl- 
[138] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



edge has furnished the broadest data for a 
psychological history of religion itself. 

The Spirit of truth is ever opening upon 
the human vision new fields of knowledge. 
This is as true in the physical and intel- 
lectual as in moral and spiritual realms. It 
is the task of the Christian seer and teacher 
of to-day to coordinate all truth, whether 
scientific or philosophical, into vital relations 
to Christian thought. It is thus inevitable 
that the perspective of Christian thinking 
will call for a constantly enlarging and hence 
changing order of rational and spiritual 
perception. The Kingdom of Christ will 
always be in need of Spirit-inspired and 
Spirit-guided teachers. This does not mean 
that the New Testament will ever be out- 
grown or abandoned. It does mean that 
the truth and spirit of the New Testament, 
with such expansion and interpretation as 
the growing life of the world may require, 
will vitally keep pace with human progress. 

Nor does this at all mean that future 
spiritual teaching for the Church of the 
world is to be of an unregulated or un- 
[139] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



authoritative type. The Spirit-inspired 
teacher and leader, tantamount to inspired 
prophet and apostle, will always be needed 
as interpreters and guides of the Kingdom. 
It should be distinctly borne in mind, how- 
ever, that not every one who assumes, and 
it may be intensely assumes, the role of 
spiritual teacher, is a safe leader of the 
Church. There are people of most intense 
convictions, of most zealous activities, and 
of fiery conscientiousness, who as measured 
by the standards of a "sound mind,'' of 
"'sound words" and "sound doctrine," 
phrases so emphatically employed in Paul's 
Epistles, are utterly unbalanced men. The 
navigation of a great ocean steamship might 
as well be committed to a captain and crew 
of insane sailors as to commit the direction 
of the Church to men of sincere but fanatical 
faith. There are zealous and conscientious 
men in the Church who, if their voices were 
to be accepted as final authority, would con- 
vert our entire religious teaching into some- 
thing no better than so much theological 
quackery. 

[140] 



INSPIRATION CONTINUOUS 



Such teachers have been in evidence in 
all ages of the Church. They were dis- 
turbers of the ancient prophets. They were 
more troublesome to St. Paul than even his 
thorn in the flesh. The great historic creeds 
were largely evolved for the purpose of 
steadying and protecting the Church against 
erratic teaching. It must be expected that 
here and there will arise unbalanced enthusi- 
asts, unsafe visionaries, misguided and mis- 
guiding teachers. 

The human rational spirit is the soul organ 
through which God manifests Himself to the 
world. In the aggregate of Spirit-illumined 
life in the Church there will be found a 
divine and infallible sanity. The prophetic 
growth of Christian thought will ever move 
onward within the lines of rational and de- 
fensible truth. The Spirit of truth ever 
working in the rational souls of believing 
men, will always furnish a sufficient and only 
safeguard of Christian doctrine, the only in- 
fallible guide for the Kingdom of Christ. 
But this means no Church with an "infal- 
lible Pope/' it means no "inerrant Book." 
[141] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



It means a Church composed of a universal 
priesthood of behevers, so Spirit-guided 
through all the panoramic changes of 
thought, across all new territories of dis- 
covery, as to be itself intellectually alert and 
progressive, sane and safe in its faith, world- 
conquering in its spirit. 



[142] 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 
THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



"By the path of adequate reflection many have reached 
theoretical convictions as to the truth of religion. Yet 
these convictions lack the fullness and the note of certainty 
which are attainable only through the deeper vision of the 
soul. This deeper vision may be given, often has been 
given, to the simple and unlearned who could not pursue 
the path of reasoning reflection. . . . We are so enamored 
of common sense that we are afraid of spiritual power, so 
slavish to what has been called *the map-loving human 
mind' that we cannot dare beyond it. And yet to discover 
our deeper selves, and thus our unity with God and our 
Divine Sonship, would be the one guarantee of a life that 
could know no defeat. We should welcome every intima- 
tion as eagerly as the explorer does a new clue. He follows 
it up until he knows what it means and where it leads to. 
Superficiality is the bane of many lives. *The well is deep,' 
and it is only by penetrating to its depths the water of life 
can be found in it. Intellect and understanding do not 
go deep enough. The soul has power to thrust itself for- 
ward beyond their reaches into a realm they have not yet 
explored, and to find reality there." 

— Rev. T. Rhondda Williams. 

"The dear Lord's best interpreters 

Are humble human souls; 

The Gospel of a life like theirs 

Is more than books or scrolls. 

From scheme and creed the light goes out. 

The saintly fact survives: 

The blessed Master none can doubt 

Revealed in holy lives." 

— J. G. Whittier. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE SPIRITUAL MIND 

A GREAT revelation, and one which has been 
too Httle heeded in critical quarters, which 
the Bible gives in response to the reverent 
scientific quest, is, that in matters of spiritual 
faith we must not place too exclusive stress 
upon mere intellect or logic. The human 
spirit is more than intellect. The spiritual 
sense has a faculty all its own for appre- 
hending and appropriating spiritual truth. 
A great lack of scientists and mental 
philosophers in the past has been their 
failure to recognize and to give due place 
to the spiritual faculty. 

The case of Professor George J. Romanes 
is well remembered. A famed scientist, a 
keen reasoner, he came to believe that the 
processes of logic and the laboratory were 
equal to the settling of all questions. On 
this basis he published in 1876 his book, 
"Candid Examination of Theism." "With 
[ 145 ] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



the utmost sorrow" to himself, he seemed 
logically shut up to the conclusion that there 
is no God. He fully appreciated the disas- 
trous consequences to human happiness of 
his conclusions. He says: "I am not 
ashamed to confess that with this virtual 
negation of God, the universe to me has 
lost its soul of loveliness ; and although from 
henceforth the precept 'to work while it is 
day' will but gain an intensified force from 
the intensified meaning of the word that 'the 
night Cometh when no man can work,' yet 
when at times I think, as think at times I 
must, of the appalling contrast between the 
hallowed glory of that creed which once was 
mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as 
now I find it — at such times I shall ever feel 
it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of 
which my nature is susceptible." 

Logically Romanes had parted with God, 
but in his soul there still lingered the irre- 
pressible witness to the Divine. Happily 
he obeyed the inner prompting for con- 
tinuous quest. Later, on "mature thought" 
and under "the ripening experiences of 
[146] 



THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



life/' he came clearly to see that in his entire 
thinking he had not sufficiently reckoned 
with the religious instincts and intuitions of 
human nature. And so, planting himself 
on the broader basis of man's religious 
nature, he rediscovered for himself a uni- 
verse in which there came back to him "the 
soul of loveliness." 

It evidences the breadth and sweetness of 
God's benevolence to know that spiritual 
certitude is not conditioned upon mere in- 
tellectual processes. There is a whole world 
of meaning in Christ's saying: "I thank 
Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, 
that Thou hast hid these things from the wise 
and prudent, and hast revealed them unto 
babes ; even so, Father ; for so it seemed good 
in Thy sight." Irrespective of grades of 
intellectual attainment, mountain-heights of 
transfiguring experiences may come into 
the lives of all devout souls. Such experi- 
ences of inspiration are shared by the 
humblest saints. The washer-woman and 
the slave may thus be made triumphantly 
conscious of their Divine kinship. 
[147] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



Historic philosophical investigations in 
general have given to intellect and logic an 
unduly exclusive prominence. Rationaliz- 
ing systems of philosophy have been built 
up on bases narrower than the capacities of 
human nature. This must be conceded while 
it may be readily admitted that the rational 
and logical faculties should have their full 
play. But if Jesus Christ presented the 
most perfect norm, if he were indeed the 
ideal Exemplar, of God's conception of the 
perfect man, then indeed in potential Chris- 
tian manhood there are far other and dif- 
ferent qualities to be taken into account than 
the mere rationalizing or logical faculties. 
Christ was filial. He was loving, dutiful. 
He was perfectly responsive to spiritual 
ideals. He measured the worth of men not 
by any mere conventional social standards, 
not by their intellectual attainments, not by 
their material belongings, nor even by the 
limitations which they might suffer because 
of evil inheritance or bad environment; but 
rather by the prophetic moral and spiritual 
possibilities which He saw in all men. Such 
[148] 



THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



was His sense of human worth that He gave 
himself to a hfe of sacrificial, unmeasured 
and transcendent service in the interest of 
human weal. Christ lived in unclouded com- 
munion with God. His supreme law of life 
and conduct was the will of God. At what- 
ever cost to Himself, He found it His 
supreme joy, it was His very meat and 
drink, to do the will of God. Now, in these 
qualities, and in a whole character fruiting 
itself in kindred qualities, we can see much 
other and greatly higher values than are 
begotten, or than can flourish, alone in the 
dry atmospheres of mere intellectualism, or 
than can be adequately expressed in the 
mechanical processes of mere logic. 

If it be true that it is the mission of the 
Spirit of God in this w^orld — the Spirit of 
all Divine Wisdom and Truth — to take of 
the things of Christ and to show them unto 
men ; if it be true that it is the mission of this 
Spirit by continuous inworking and leaven- 
ing processes to inspire the world with 
Christlike ideals, then it must surely follow, 
and on the divinest standards of measure- 
[ 149 ] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



ment, that the most perfect type of man 
possible is he in whose Kfe and character are 
most perfectly apprehended and expressed 
the Spirit which was in Christ Jesus. The 
man who has really come into the richest 
heritage of God's love, be he otherwise rich 
or poor, learned or unlearned, is he who has 
entered most fully into that spiritual life 
which alone is begotten in the soul by Him 
whom Jesus named as the "Spirit of Truth." 

Between the inspirations of this Spirit 
and the highest reaches of intellect there 
are no discords, no cleavages. Man intel- 
lectually, as certainly as spiritually, is God's 
offspring. To think his best thoughts he 
must live on high altitudes; but the highest 
altitudes possible to human life are those 
most luminously spiritual. 

It may be accepted as a sure criterion of 
the higher values which God puts upon 
spiritual possessions, that He makes these 
possessions attainable by all His children. 
It seems to be inevitable in the condition of 
things that not all men can attain unto what 
would seem ideal intellectual, social or ma- 
[150] 



THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



terial conditions in this life. But the great 
Father has thrown wide open to all men, 
the rich and the poor alike, the doors of 
communion with Himself. The spiritual 
life, the life of certified membership in 
God's family, the life that brings the en- 
riching consciousness of God's love and sus- 
taining fellowship, is just as freely and fully 
given to the most humble and unprivileged 
member of society as to those who dwell in 
king's palaces. 

The wonder of these claims is only equaled 
by the availability of their realization. 
Take whatever standard of experience we 
may, even that of inspired prophet or 
apostle, there seems no limit to the possi- 
bilities of spiritual experience which may be 
even now attained by those who will pay 
the price of conformity to the conditions of 
the spiritual life. We cannot study the his- 
tory of the great saints without becoming 
impressed with a sense of the unlimited 
spiritual wealth which God is crowding upon 
human receptivities. 

The conversion of Augustine is a stand- 
[ 151 ] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



ing miracle of moral and spiritual trans- 
formation, and his sustained Christian char- 
acter presents one of the most beautiful 
portraits in the long historic gallery of 
exceptional saints. The life of Francis of 
Assisi was a life lived in a crude age, and 
amid essentially barbarous surroundings, 
and yet a life so inwrought with the spirit 
of Christ Himself as to make him most im- 
pressively a reproduction of Christ both in 
spirit and character. George Fox, the 
humble Quaker shoemaker, became so con- 
vinced that the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit 
which inspired the prophets and apostles, 
was still in the world to inspire, to teach, to 
enlighten and to fill the true believer with 
divinest power, that in this faith he became 
transformed into a real apostle of spiritual 
light, and under the inspiration of his ex- 
perience he became so overwhelmingly im- 
bued with a desire to carry the love of God 
to men, that for the sake of preaching the 
Gospel he submitted himself to a life of 
incredible toil, hardship and sacrifice. It 
was of him that Carlyle said: ''To this man 
[152] 



THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



the Divine Idea of the universe manifests 
itself. . . . That Leicester shoe-shop, had 
men known it, was a holier place than any 
Vatican or Loretto shrine." 

John Wesley was well-born. He was 
cultured, conscientious, religious. But it 
was not until he had received an experi- 
mental answer to the question over which he 
had long pondered, namely: "Does the 
Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit 
that you are a child of God?" that he came 
into his real enduement of power. From 
that day he became himself an irresistible 
spiritual force. Thenceforward his life was 
like an inextinguishable flame from which 
was kindled a new evangelical warmth 
which changed the moral atmosphere of 
England. 

The facts are too little known, but prob- 
ably all Christian history affords no more 
striking illustration of the power of the 
Spirit to sustain and fortify the character 
of Christian believers than is furnished by a 
multitude of humble Chinese converts dur- 
ing the period of the ''Boxer" rebellion. It 
[153] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



was not easy for these converts even to begin 
the Christian life. They had to go in the 
face of an immemorial ancestral faith. They 
encountered ostracism, persecution and ban- 
ishment from their own kindred. But in 
their new faith they had found a valid and 
joyful spiritual experience. The "Boxer" 
spirit focused itself in brutal and fatal per- 
secution against these Chinese converts. In 
most cases they were given the option of 
recanting their Christian faith, and thus of 
saving their lives. All required was that 
they should trample into the dust a piece of 
paper with the name of Christ written upon 
it. But without compromise and without 
hesitation they refused the option until 
within a single province a thousand of them, 
for the sake of the experience which the 
Spirit had sealed in their lives, went to a 
martyr's death, a death inflicted by processes 
as cruel and repulsive as the most malignant 
ingenuity could devise. And so, through all 
the ages, Jesus Christ through the Divine 
Spirit takes hold of the lives of men, even 
of poor, ignorant, and bad men, transform- 
[154] 



THE SPIRITUAL MIND 



ing them, and filling them with a new beauty, 
purity and joy. 

Saul Kane, a drunkard, a fighter, a 
debauchee, in a ^'filthy drinking-place," and 
amid low companions, was one night through 
the agency of a good Quaker lady spirit- 
ually arrested. In him there was wrought 
that greatest miracle — conversion. And 
this is how in part he describes his 
experience : 

"Oh, Glory of the lighted mind. 
How dead I've been, how dumb, how blind; 
The station brook, to my new eyes; 
Was bubbling out of Paradise; 
The waters rushing from the rain 
Were singing — 'Christ has risen again.' 
I thought all earthly creatures knelt 
From rapture of the joy I felt. 
The narrow station wall's brick ledge. 
The wild hop withering on the hedge. 
The lights in huntsman's upper story. 
Were parts of an eternal glory; 
Were God's eternal garden flowers — 
I stood in bliss at this for hours." 

And what after all are all the raptures 
of prophet, apostle, saint and converted 
[155] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



sinner, but the breaking in upon the human 
consciousness of that greatest and highest 
of all realities — the Spiritual universe? Of 
spiritual revelation thus far given, either in 
Bible, inspired song or transfiguration rap- 
ture of saintly experience — all are but the 
out-gleaming and the prophecy of an in- 
finite indescribably glorious and eternal 
spiritual heritage, a heritage for the final 
possession of which God, by all the outgoings 
of His spiritual nurture, is preparing His 
people. 



[156] 



CHAPTER TWELVE 
INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 



"A man has two aspects. One aspect of him is physical; 
it can be seen and touched, weighed and measured; its chem- 
ical constituents can be analyzed and reduced to formulae. 
The other aspect of him is invisible, intangible; it cannot 
be weighed or measured; it is his world of loves, hates, 
thoughts, ambitions; in it are resident his sense of duty and 
his aspirations after God, and at the center is that mys- 
tical, self-conscious memory, which survives the passage 
of the years, outlasts the building and break-down of the 
flesh and gives continuity to all his personal experiences. . . . 
The denial of immortality introduces us into a world where 
men are flesh with a transient spiritual aspect; where there 
are no permanent elements save the physical forces which 
build solar systems and destroy them; where earth throws 
away with utter carelessness its most precious treasures, 
never resolves to harmony the dissonance of its inequities 
and has no way of preserving its moral gains; where no 
eternal value in personality motives sacrifice for spiritual 
quality in the individual or furnishes basis for passionate 
and hopeful service to the race. If life eternal is not true, 
that is our world, and sooner or later men will find it out." 
— Rev. Habry Emebson Fosdick, D,D, 



CHAPTER XII 

INSPIRATION AND 
IMMORTALITY 

In this writing it has not been central to my 
purpose to discuss the doctrine of immor- 
tahty. But, in this closing chapter, I yield 
to the prompting briefly to call attention to 
the prophetic values with which the doctrine 
of Divine Inspiration invests that other 
Christian doctrine of Immortality. Famili- 
arity with the trends of modern thought 
must make impressive the nebulous faith and 
the obscuring doubt in which many a 
present-day thinker holds, if at all, a belief 
in immortality. It cannot, I think, be 
denied that such is the mental attitude of 
many essentially strong and personally noble 
characters with reference to a post-mortem 
and persistent life for the individual soul. 
From all that, however, I venture to take 
refuge in the belief that such a negative 

[159] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



philosophy of being can only be entertained 
on the basis of insufficient reason. I make 
this venture under the profound impression 
that the broader meaning and the fuller 
vision of both the individual life and the 
universe call for nothing less than the divine 
fact of immortality, and for an environment 
which shall give ample scope for the con- 
tinuous intellectual and moral development 
of man. 

The one supreme and obvious end toward 
which all the countless eons of creative evolu- 
tion have wrought seems to be the production 
of an individual, an individual endowed with 
the sovereignty of character, a thinking, 
moral being, with seemingly limitless capaci- 
ties for intellectual and moral attainment. 
This being stands at the summit of creation. 
For his production all the working ages and 
the cosmic forces have supremely wrought. 
If a being installed at such cost is simply to 
be annihilated after thirty or forty years of 
waking mundane life, then man at his best 
would seem to be only an absurd product 
in an irrational universe. 
[160] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMOETALITY 

There is a philosophy which teaches that 
the highest function of the most nobly de- 
veloped man is to live his brief earthly life 
and then to die, leaving the fruits of his 
good living as a contribution toward the 
evolutionary betterment of the race. This 
is far from presenting a selfish scheme for 
the individual life; but as a philosophy of 
being, when run down to its last analysis, 
it proves to be absurd, naked and empty. 
The man whose ideal is at last to join the 

"Choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead who live again 
In minds made better by their presence," 

is only committing himself to a theory which 
in the end will prove as lifeless and barren 
as the tenantless moon. The logic of this 
philosophy points inevitably to a period 
when all the race will be extinct, when all 
the contributions of all the generations of 
the good toward the betterment of their suc- 
cessors, will be alike cast to endless waste 
and void. The superlative contributions of 
Plato the thinker, of Shakespeare the poet, 
[161] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



and of Christ the world's peerless spiritual 
master, will all alike be as though they had 
never been made. This philosophy applied 
to the destiny of the race is the same as that 
of annihilation after a few brief years .for 
the individual. It only subjects the race to 
a somewhat prolonged series of annihila- 
tions which at last ends for the whole in 
meaningless extinction. It is a philosophy 
which in a large and final sense serves no 
rational end. 

The instinct of immortality must be as- 
serted as divinely implanted. Even such 
acute philosophic and scientific agnostic 
thinkers as Herbert Spencer, Professor 
Thomas Huxley, and a multitude of others 
like-minded, approached old age with intense 
and glowing desire for a continued life 
which might give them indefinite oppor- 
tunity for thought and work. And if these 
great minds had not limited themselves to 
an insufficient scope of reasoning and of evi- 
dence, they might have died in the exultant 
hope of an indefinitely extended life in a 
larger environment. 

[162] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 

The highest condition of being to us con- 
ceivable is in its environing conditions social. 
Individuality reaches its highest develop- 
ment and realizes its largest function in 
relationships with kindred beings. All the 
moral qualities which we associate with 
character, all merit and demerit, all good 
influences, all helpful service, all affections, 
all standards of conduct and thought, all in- 
spirations, all sacrifices — indeed pretty much 
everything that enters into the values of life 
and destiny, has its play and scope for de- 
velopment in the individual through his 
associated relations. But if we are to accept 
the premises of the positivistic philosophy, 
it is evident that the period will some time 
arise when all human relationships will be 
extinguished. 

If positivism were definitely to assert the 
fact of God, the creator of the human con- 
stitution with its embodiment of social and 
ethical faculties, giving scope, as our present 
life seems to do, for the development of a 
sense of friendship, of brotherhood, of 
mutual obligation, of social justice, of 
[163] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



benevolence and of worship — a scheme large 
enough in itself to suggest a most optimistic 
prophecy for the future of mankind — ^yet 
in the end, it could only result in the nega- 
tion of all prophecy, in a vast void in which 
God alone would remain to treasure the 
memory of an extinct race of moral beings. 
Surely, in such a scheme as this there does 
not seem anything really worthy to occupy 
the thought and energy of an infinite God. 
As compared with what may be familiarly 
styled the old-fashioned, orthodox Christian 
conception of immortality, the positivist 
philosophy presents only a contemptible 
scale of measurement for both the thought 
and purposes of a supreme Director and 
Conductor of a moral universe. 

God Himself is a social Being and there 
can be no nobler conception of His purpose 
than that in fulfillment of His own prompt- 
ings He has begotten in the intellectual and 
moral likeness of Himself children for 
whom He ordains an undying place in His 
universe, whom He has endowed with 
capacity for unlimited and endless growth 
[164] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 

in knowledge and in moral excellence, and 
with whom He will maintain an intimacy of 
ever-increasing fellowship and revelation 
throughout the dateless ages of unending 
being. This conception at least has the merit 
of being somewhat commensurate with the 
best things we are able to think about God; 
it is in harmony with the loftiest views which 
have come to us in what we believe to be a 
revelation from Jesus Christ. Moreover, it 
is a view from which no skeptical criticism 
has been able to dislodge either Christian ex- 
perience or faith. On the other hand, it is 
a view which carries with it many rational 
confirmations, in the clearest and most com- 
prehensive philosophy of the present day. 

The human individual, in the most perfect 
evolution thus far realized, carries in him- 
self an ever-growing prophecy of a divine 
future. True, in the present life, the 
physical organism through which he does 
his work fails and crumbles. But on the 
very verge of physical dissolution, the mind 
may be only beginning to assert its prophetic 
vigor, the moral vision only beginning to 
[165] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



take on the measurements of the infinite 
harmonies, the energies of the soul only 
girding themselves for eternal achievements. 
In any attempt to understand God's meth- 
ods and purposes for men, we have a right 
to employ the highest standards of compari- 
son. Nothing short of immortality, nothing 
less than a scope that is infinite can satisfy 
the prophecy for the future of man, a 
prophecy which is ever voicing itself in the 
lives of the world's best men. Man is a 
being into whose heart God has put eternity. 
No philosophy short of this is adequate 
for furnishing life with highest motives of 
thought and conduct. It would not be true, 
it would be even libelous, to declare that a 
man wanting in the inspirations of a high 
Christian faith could not, therefore, be a 
man of virtue, of probity, a good husband, 
a good citizen, a useful worker in the world. 
It is easily possible for a man gravely lack- 
ing in Christian faith to be a lover of virtue, 
of truth, of justice, and so to do his work in 
the world as to make himself a benefactor to 
his fellows. But admitting, and even em- 
[166] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 

phasizing all this, it still remains true that 
there are no motives, no furnished incen- 
tives, in any system short of the Christian 
faith that yield the adequate ideals, the re- 
quired stimulus, for the best shaping of 
both human conduct and character. 

The average man needs a constant ar- 
raignment of his thought at the bar of 
eternal responsibilities. Multitudes of men 
are engrossed with low ideals, imprisoned 
in a bad environment, are under the domin- 
ion of a carnalized mind. In such as these 
the finer loyalties of character, the higher 
spiritual susceptibilities have hardly come 
to any very clear expression. Their real 
moral natures need to be awakened, as by 
the thunder-trumpets of judgment. The 
flashing of Sinai lightnings is required to 
open their vision to what to them shall be a 
fearful and saving sense of God. It is safe 
to say that God has engrafted into the 
human constitution a moral sense of Him- 
self. This sense lies somewhere in every 
human nature. In multitudes it may seem 
suppressed even to dormancy; but it still 
[167] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



exists in every man. No man rises to his 
best life with this sense unawakened. It 
seems a moral tragedy that in the lives of so 
many this sense never seems to be evoked 
save under some thunder-crash of terror. 
There are multitudes who will never yield 
to the summons of moral persuasion until 
they are first moved by some vision of "the 
terror of the Lord." There are many whose 
characters will remain groveling, whose 
moral conditions will remain hopeless, unless 
they shall first hear in their souls a clarion 
call that awakens them to thoughts of God. 
Professor Goldwin Smith made himself 
believe that immortality is no better than a 
dream. But he was too intelligent, too 
honest, to be blind to the popular conse- 
quences of his creed. He knew what would 
be the blighting effect of such a negation 
upon the community at large, upon what are 
judged as the highest social and democratic 
ideals, upon the altruistic motives for service 
which now so helpfully pervade human 
society. He knew what effect such a view 
would naturally have upon individual con- 
[168] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 

duct. He says : "A man of sense will prob- 
ably be satisfied to let reforms alone and to 
consider how he may best go through the 
journey of life with comfort and, if possible, 
with enjoyment to himself." 

We need make no mistake. It is a propo- 
sition abundantly demonstrated and empha- 
sized in the common history of the race: 
Man in order to reach his moral best, in 
order to marshal his own forces toward the 
working out of his highest destiny, needs to 
hear the call and to feel the urge of motives 
unearthly and eternal. It is safe to say that 
these motives are nowhere so forcefully pre- 
sented, nowhere so consistently urged as in 
the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Gospel that 
with divine sanction teaches man's morally 
responsible and immortal being. 

It is in the light of Immortahty that the 
doctrine of Divine Inspiration receives its 
deepest significance. The two doctrines sup- 
plement each other as the two halves of a 
hemisphere. God created man in His own 
image, that He might have a being with 
whom He could really hold fellowship, and 
[169] 



DIVINE INSPIRATION 



upon whom He could bestow His own 
nurture and wealth forevermore. It may 
reverently be said that God's creation of 
man was prompted by an infinite instinct 
for a family life, by God's desire to people 
with congenial company the world which he 
had made. 

It seems an impertinence, something 
blind if not wicked, to assume that God 
made a being with mental and moral apti- 
tudes responsive to the Divine nature, only 
that this wonderful product should be simply 
snuffed out of existence after a few infantile 
and puny years have been spent here upon 
the earth. Man begins life indeed as a 
child, inexperienced, ignorant, helpless. 
But, if so, this child is endued with infinite 
potentialities. God made man subject to 
His own eternal nurture, with the purpose 
that man might evermore grow into God- 
like stature. 

God does not inspire and educate His 
sons for the brief and abortive ends of a 
mere mortal life. That being in which God 
has reproduced His own image, and to 

[170] 



INSPIRATION AND IMMORTALITY 

whom He under His own nurture increas- 
ingly imparts a knowledge of Himself, is a 
being made to take on increasing splendors 
when the light of suns and stars shall have 
faded from space. 

"The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years; 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth. 
Unhurt amidst the war of elements, 
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds/* 



[171] 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: May 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry TownshiD. PA i606'o 
{724)779-21^ 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




014 165 425 1 



